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WHAT    IS    PRAGMATISM? 


By  the  Same  Author 

"THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  RELIGIOUS   BELIEF *» 

New  York.    Thb  Macmillan  Company.    1907 


WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 


BY 


JAMES   BISSETT   PRATT,   Ph.D. 

ASSISTANT   PROFESSOR   OF   PHILOSOPHY 
IN   WILLIAMS   COLLEGE 


THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 
1909 

AU  rights  reserved 


\^6 


Copyright,  1909, 
By  the   MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  February,  1909.     Reprinted 
June,  1909. 


Nartjjoat)  H^tne 

J.  8.  Gushing  (Jo.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


\ 


(    \ 


9 


tBo 

JOHN   EDWARD    RUSSELL 

THE   KEENEST  AND   KINDLIEST   CRITIC   OF   PRAGMATISM 

THIS   BOOK   IS   INSCRIBED 

IN  GRATEFUL  AND  SINCERE  AFFECTION 


PREFACE 

During  the  spring  of  1908  I  received  an 
invitation  from  Mr.  Stephen  F.  Weston  to 
give  a  course  of  six  lectures  the  following 
summer  at  the  Glenmore  Summer  School, 
and  to  choose  my  own  subject.  Unfortu- 
nately for  the  school,  as  it  turned  out,  I 
decided  to  make  use  of  the  opportunity  to 
say  certain  things  about  pragmatism  that 
had  long  been  stirring  in  my  soul ;  and 
"  Pragmatism,  A  Critique,"  was,  accordingly, 
advertised  in  the  circular  of  the  school  as 
the  subject  of  my  lectures.  I  say  my  choice 
was  unfortunate  for  the  school,  for  when, 
after  a  twenty-mile  drive  into  the  heart  of 
the  Adirondacks,  I  reached  Glenmore,  I 
found  that  the  patrons  of  the  school  had  to 
a  man  (and  almost  to  a  woman)  postponed 
their  arrival  to  the  following  week,  and  it 
looked  as  if  Mr.  Weston  and  myself  would 


Vill  PREFACE 

constitute  the  bulk  of  the  audience.  By  the 
help  of  the  neighbors,  however,  we  managed 
to  corral  several  philosophers  who  were 
known  to  be  at  large  in  the  mountains,  and 
several  lovers  of  philosophy,  who  by  their 
kindly  interest  and  helpful  suggestions  more 
than  made  up  for  the  paucity  of  their  num- 
bers. The  purpose  of  the  publication  of  this 
book  is,  therefore,  to  show  those  who  did  not 
go  to  Glenmore  last  summer  (and  this  in- 
cludes a  fairly  large  portion  of  the  human 
race)  how  much  they  missed. 

The  criticisms  of  my  friends  at  Glenmore 
proved  decidedly  valuable,  and  the  following 
pages  have,  therefore,  been  somewhat  recast 
since  I  gave  the  lectures;  yet  it  has  seemed 
advisable  to  retain  the  lecture  form  as  best 
adapted  to  somewhat  popular  and  informal 
exposition.  For  though  I  have  nowhere 
allowed  the  desire  for  simplicity  and  popu- 
larity to  interfere  with  thoroughness  of  treat- 
ment, and  though  I  have  used  technical 
language  where  exactness  demanded  it,  my 
aim  has  been  throughout  to  give  an  exposi- 


PREFACE  IX 

tion  and  critique  of  pragmatism  which  the 
general  reader  could  follow  without  too 
much  effort.  I  cannot  flatter  myself  that 
he  will  always  find  the  following  pages  inter- 
esting or  easy,  but  if  he  really  cares  to  know 
about  pragmatism  and  hence  comes  armed 
with  patience,  he  will,  I  hope,  find  them 
clear. 

Although  the  controversy  over  pragma- 
tism has  now  been  waging  for  several  years, 
and  although  the  non-pragmatists  have  been 
quite  as  numerous  and  as  active  as  their 
opponents,  their  contributions  to  the  dis- 
cussion have  been  confined  almost  entirely 
to  the  technical  periodicals,  whereas  the 
pragmatist  side  has  been  presented  to  the 
public  in  three  or  four  books  which  have 
commanded  a  fairly  wide  reading.  Of  course 
the  "  public "  never  reads  the  technical 
periodicals,  and  there  is,  therefore,  a  place 
for  a  book  which  (while  not  presupposing  any 
prior  knowledge  of  the  subject)  shall  present, 
with  some  attempt  at  comprehensiveness  and 
unity,  the  position  of  those  who  find  them- 


X  PREFACE 

selves  unable  to  accept  the  pragmatist  view. 
Two  such  books  have  appeared  in  France, 
but  there  is  as  yet  (so  far  as  I  am  aware)  no 
book  in  English  which  has  this  aim. 

It  is,  of  course,  with  this  aim  that  I  have 
written  the  following  pages.  It  would  be 
disingenuous  in  me  should  I  not  frankly 
declare  war  on  pragmatism  even  in  my 
preface.  But  I  hope  my  readers  will  do  me 
the  justice  to  believe  me  when  I  say  that 
to  criticise  pragmatism  has  been  only  my 
secondary  object,  my  chief  aim  being  to 
understa7id  it  and  to  help  others  to  do  so. 
When  the  movement  first  began  I  was  an 
enthusiastic  pragmatist,  and  my  enthusiasm 
lasted  until  I  came  to  understand  clearly 
what  it  really  meant.  And  though  I  am 
no  longer  one  of  its  supporters,  its  charm  is 
still  so  strong  upon  me  that  I  am  eager  to 
see  it  completely  developed  and  carefully 
expressed,  and  the  good  seed  which  indu- 
bitably is  in  it  threshed  out  and  separated 
from  the  immense  amount  of  chaff  which 
bears  its   name.     Threshing   only  can  save 


PREFACE  XI 

whatever  of  value  there  is  in  it ;  and  I  hope 
my  pragmatist  friends  will  at  least  see  in 
my  book  a  sincere  attempt  to  aid  them  in 
our  common  task  of  "making  our  ideas 
clear." 

My  thanks  are  due  to  the  editors  of  the 
Journal  of  Philosophy^  Psychology^  and  Sci- 
entific Methods,  for  their  courtesy  in  permit- 
ting me  to  make  use  (in  Lectures  II  and  III) 
of  material  taken  from  two  articles  of  mine 
which  appeared  in  their  Journal  during  the 
years  1907  and  1908.  And  most  of  all  I 
wish  to  acknowledge  with  sincere  gratitude 
the  invaluable  and  unfailing  assistance,  ad- 
vice, and  guidance  which  I  have  received 
from  Professor  John  E.  Russell  of  Williams 
College.  It  was  at  first  his  intention  to 
collaborate  with  me  upon  a  book  of  this 
nature,  but  lack  of  time  prevented  him  from 
carrying  out  his  part  of  the  plan,  —  to  the 
very  considerable  loss  of  the  many  who 
would  have  read  this  book  had  he  been  its 
principal  author.  But  the  loss  has  not  been 
absolute ;   for  those  of  my  readers  who  have 


Xll  PREFACE 

followed  the  controversy  over  pragmatism 
will  recognize  that  very  much  of  what  is 
best  in  this  book  is  due  to  him, 

WiLLIAMSTOWN,   MASS., 

February  i,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

LECTURE   I 

PAGE 

Meaning  and  Method  in  Pragmatism    .        ,        .        i 

LECTURE   II 
The  Ambiguity  of  Truth 47 

LECTURE   III 
The  Pragmatic  View  of  the  Truth  Relation    .      81 

LECTURE  IV 
Pragmatism  and  Knowledge 133 

LECTURE  V 
Pragmatism  and  Religion 173 

LECTURE  VI 
The  "Practical"  Point  of  View    .        ,        .        .211 

Index •      .    255 


LECTURE    I 
MEANING  AND  METHOD   IN   PRAGMATISM 


WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 
LECTURE   I 

MEANING  AND  METHOD   IN   PRAGMATISM 

I  REMEMBER  oncc  hearing  a  professor  of 
*'  Real  Property  "  in  one  of  our  leading  law 
schools  discuss  very  learnedly  and  at  con- 
siderable length  the  question  whether  any 
one  in  the  United  States  really  owned  any 
land.  To  put  it  in  the  professor's  words,  the 
question  was  (if  I  remember  aright)  whether 
the  title  to  land  was  ever  actually  vested  in 
the  individual  or  whether  he  was  merely  an 
occupant,  the  real  owner  being  the  state. 
On  the  one  hand,  the  professor  pointed 
out,  the  individual  could  do  what  he  liked 
with  his  land,  could  deed  it  to  whom  he 
pleased  and  dispose  of  it  in  any  way  that 
suited  him.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
was  the  power  of  eminent  domain,  the  right 

3 


4  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

of  the  state  to  condemn  the  land  and  take  it 
from  him,  for  a  suitable  consideration,  at  any 
time.  This  being  the  case,  in  whom  is  the 
ownership  really  vested  ? 

The  conclusion  to  which  most  of  us  came, 
as  I  remember  it,  was  that  this  was  one  of 
the  mysteries  of  the  law  which  the  mind  of 
man  could  never  fathom.  Doubtless  the 
land  belonged  to  some  one ;  in  fact,  it  very 
obviously  belonged  either  to  the  individual 
or  to  the  state.  But  to  which  of  these  it 
really  belonged  was  a  question  which  could 
probably  never  be  answered. 

Now  if  there  had  been  among  us  at  the 
time  a  pragmatist  philosopher,  he  would  prob- 
ably have  addressed  us  in  Some  such  words 
as  these :  "  My  friends,"  he  would  have  said, 
"your  difficulty  is  all  of  your  own  making. 
You  think  you  are  puzzling  over  a  very  deep 
problem ;  but  there  is  really  no  problem 
here  to  puzzle  over.  What  you  take  for 
depth  is  in  fact  only  the  muddiness  of  your 
own  thought.  For  consider:  What  you 
want  to  know  is  in  whom  the  ownership  of 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  5 

the  land  is  vested.  That  being  the  case, 
your  first  question  should  be,  What  do  we 
mean  by  ownership?  And  the  answer  to 
this  is  simple  enough;  namely,  the  right 
to  do  this,  that,  and  the  other  with  the  object 
owned.  Enumerate  all  the  things  that  can 
be  done  with  land ;  then  the  right  to  do  just 
these  things  is  ownership.  And  once  you 
have  enumerated  these  rights,  you  have  ex- 
hausted the  meaning  of  the  term.  If  owner- 
ship means  anything  more  than  this,  what  is 
it?  You  cannot  say.  Except  in  the  con- 
crete and  practical  sense  I  have  defined, 
'ownership''  means  just  nothing  at  all,  —  it 
is  a  mere  term  without  content.  Of  course, 
one's  ownership  may  be  more  or  less  limited, 
according  as  one  has  the  right  to  do  fewer 
or  more  things  with  the  object  one  'owns.' 
Hence,  to  return  to  your  particular  question, 
the  individual  owns  the  land  in  the  sense  of 
being  able  to  dig  in  it,  build  on  it,  sell  it,  or 
give  it  away,  etc. ;  and  the  state  owns  it 
in  the  sense  of  being  able  to  take  it  from  the 
individual  if  it  desires.     And  so  your  ques- 


6  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

tion  answers  itself.  In  short,  your  insoluble 
mystery  is  merely  gratuitous  mystification 
of  your  own  making.  It  seems  a  mystery 
only  because  it  is  meaningless." 

I  have  used  this  illustration,  drawn  from 
a  field  at  some  distance  from  philosophy, 
to  show  how  the  pragmatist  may  often 
succeed  in  solving  our  problems  for  us  by 
simply  demonstrating  to  us  that  they  are 
no  problems  at  all.  Don't  seek  to  solve  a 
question,  says  pragmatism,  until  you  know 
what  you  mean  by  it.  Think  so  far  as 
possible  in  concrete  terms.  Never  let  your- 
self be  hoodwinked  and  browbeaten  by  big 
words  and  verbal  abstractions.  Remember 
that  the  meaning  of  philosophical  terms 
may  often  be  in  inverse  proportion  to 
their  length.  Words  are  but  pragmatists' 
counters ;  they  do  but  reckon  with  them ; 
but  they  are  the  money  of  non-pragmatists. 
Concerning  every  object  of  discussion  ask 
the  question  :  Wlmt  is  it  known  as  ?  What 
does  it  mean  to  me?  For,  as  G.  H.  Lewes 
has  said,  and  as  Aristotle  said  long  before 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  7 

him,  a  thing  is  what  it  does.  All  that  it 
can  ever  mean  is  just  the  difference  that 
s^t  can  make  to  some  one.  There  is  no 
genuine  difference  that  does  not  make  a 
difference. 

Well,  every  pragmatist  will  tell  you  this 
is  pragmatism;  and  I  trust  all  my  hearers 
are  good  pragmatists.  It  goes  without  say- 
ing that  I  am  one.  Who,  indeed,  could 
resist  a  doctrine  so  delightfully  healthy, 
clear-cut,  simple,  and  helpful  ?  It  has  the 
salt  air  of  the  sea  in  it  and  the  ozone 
of  the  mountains.  With  this  philosophy 
within  one's  grasp,  who  would  choose  to 
be  bound  down  in  servile  submission  to 
verbal  abstractions,  and  to  spend  one's  days 
discussing  problems  that  have  no  meaning? 
Rather  let  us  think  clearly  and  to  the  point, 
and  sign  an  intellectual  Declaration  of 
Independence  from  all  unmeaning  con- 
cepts. It  is  not  surprising  that  the  new 
philosophy  is  advancing  victoriously  over 
the  land,  and  that  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men  are  joining  the  procession.     In  the 


8  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

glow  of  our  loyalty  we  are  willing  to  march 
against  any  foe,  under  our  banner,  upon 
whose  ample  folds  we  have  written,  "  Away 
with  Logomachy  and  Meaningless  Abstrac- 
tions ! " 

But  alas  !  where  is  the  foe  ?  Who  is  it 
that  is  championing  logomachy  and  meaning- 
less abstractions  ?  If  belief  in  clear  thought 
and  the  other  admirable  things  named  above 
be  pragmatism,  are  we  not  all  pragmatists  ? 
—  Indeed,  we  do  not  all  practice  what  we 
preach  (not  even  all  the  leaders  of  pragma- 
tism do  that),  but  who  would  not  give  his 
enthusiastic  assent  to  the  laudable  doctrines 
and  admonitions  set  out  above?  —  And  if 
we  are  all  pragmatists  and  there  be  no  foe 
to  fight,  the  rather  disconcerting  question 
presents  itself  why  we  should  make  such 
a  fuss  about  it.  Unless  pragmatism  has 
something  more  distinctive  and  original  to 
offer,  is  it  really  anything  more  than  a 
new  and  rather  superfluous  name  for  some 
exceedingly  old  and  common  ways  of  think- 
ing ? 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  9 

Of  course  pragmatism  is  more  than  this, 
—  otherwise  it  would  resemble  a  Fourth 
of  July  oration  on  "  Liberty "  in  a  New 
England  village,  or  a  revival  among  the 
sanctified.  Pragmatism  seeks  and  claims 
to  be  strenuous,  militant,  —  a  plan  of  cam- 
paign rather  than  a  celebration  or  an  ex- 
perience meeting.  So  much  of  pragmatism 
as  I  have  described  thus  far  is  only  its 
spirit ;  but  it  is  in  addition  to  this  a  definite 
and  technical  doctrine  or  group  of  doc- 
trines on  certain  fundamental  philosophical 
questions.  "  Pragmatism  (according  to  Mr. 
James)  is  a  temper  of  mind,  an  attitude ; 
it  is  also  a  theory  of  the  nature  of  ideas 
and  truth ;  and  finally  it  is  a  theory  about 
reality."  ^  More  specifically,  it  may  be  said 
that  pragmatism  offers  us  a  theory  of  mean- 
ing, a  theory  of  truth,  and  a  theory  of 
knowledge;  that  it  is  trying  to  work  out 
a  theory  of  reality;  and  that  it  is  also  a 
general   point   of   view   or   way  of   looking 

^  Professor  Dewey  in  "  What  does  Pragmatism  mean  by 
Practical  ?"  Jour,  of  Phil.,  Vol.  V,  p.  85. 


lO  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

at  things,  —  a  way  that  is  in  part  peculiar 
to  pragmatists,  in  part  adopted  by  them 
from  a  larger  tendency  or  attitude  which 
colors  much  of  contemporary  thought.  I 
shall  take  up  each  of  these  things  in 
turn  in  the  following  lectures,  beginning 
to-day  with  a  consideration  of  the  pragma- 
tist  doctrine  of  the  nature  of  meaning  and 
of  the  method  of  dealing  with  philosophical 
problems  which  pragmatism  naturally  de- 
duces from  that  doctrine. 

"  Meaning  "  and  "  method  "  are,  I  confess, 
not  intrinsically  interesting  subjects.  I  wish 
I  had  something  more  attractive  to  offer 
you,  but  it  really  is  not  my  fault.  I  might, 
of  course,  give  you  just  a  general  "  point  of 
view "  which  would,  perhaps,  not  be  alto- 
gether without  interest;  but  I  mean  to  do 
no  such  thing.  I  mean  to  treat  the  techni- 
cal doctrines  of  pragmatism  in  as  exact  a 
fashion  as  I  can  —  any  other  treatment  of 
them  I  should  consider  an  insult  to  my  audi- 
ence. Pragmatism  has  been  defined  by  its 
founder  as  a  way  "  to  make  our  ideas  clear  " ; 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  II 

hence  its  doctrines  must  themselves  certainly 
be  clear  and  capable  of  exact  formulation. 
We  should  not  be  satisfied  —  and  so  far  as 
we  are  good  pragmatists  we  cannot  be  sat- 
isfied —  with  any  loose  definitions  and  any 
vague  tendencies  and  generalities.  So  long 
as  we  allow  ourselves  to  be  soothed  and 
satisfied  by  them  we  shall  be  very  far  from 
making  our  ideas  clear.  We  must  there- 
fore do  pragmatism  the  justice  to  take  it 
seriously,  to  sift  the  formulations  of  it  given 
by  the  leading  pragmatists,  and  not  to  rest 
satisfied  till  we  see  exactly  what  they  mean. 
Such  a  thorough-going  examination  of  prag- 
matic meaning  and  method  may  seem  to 
some  of  you  at  times  dry,  difficult,  and  per- 
haps over-technical.  But  if  you  are  really 
consistent,  sincere,  and  honest  pragmatists 
at  heart,  you  will  not  hesitate  at  any  diffi- 
culty in  the  effort  to  make  your  ideas  clear 
and  to  free  yourselves  from  the  power  of 
mere  words  and  phrases.  Those,  on  the 
other  hand,  who  are  pragmatists  in  name 
only  I  am  sure  will  stay  behind,  content  with 


\ 


1 2  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM  ? 

"  words  "  and  "  tendencies,"  and  will  continue 
to  throw  their  caps  in  air,  shouting,  "  Hurrah 
for  Pragmatism  !  "  without  being  over-curious 
as  to  what  it  really  is,  or  why  they  should 
make  such  a  noise  about  it. 

Pragmatism  may  be  regarded  as  the  result 
of  two  confluent,  though  not  altogether  con- 
sistent, streams  of  tendency.  The  first,  and 
probably  the  less  influential,  of  these  may  be 
traced  back  as  far  as  Kant's  doctrine  of  the 
primacy  of  the  practical  reason.  We  cannot, 
said  Kant,  prove  the  reality  of  God,  freedom, 
immortality,  and  the  moral  law.  But  since 
we  are  volitional,  active,  rational  beings  we 
have  both  the  right  and  the  duty  \.o  postulate 
the  reality  of  these  things  and  whatever  else 
may  be  essential  to  moral  action.  It  is  in- 
deed possible  that  we  are  not  free;  but  we 
are  bound  to  act  as  if  we  were  free,  and 
since  freedom  is  essential  to  morality,  it  is 
our  duty  to  believe  in  it. 

Practically  this  same  brave  moral  doctrine 
was  revived  and  reformulated  in  1896  by 
Professor    James's    "Will    to    Believe," — a 


MEANING   AND   METHOD  1 3 

book  that  has  stirred  America  as  have  few- 
philosophic  works  of  our  generation.  In  the 
first  essay  of  the  volume  (which  gave  its  title 
to  the  whole)  Professor  James  points  out  that 
faith  is  itself  a  force  and  often  makes  real 
its  own  object ;  and  that  when  w^e  are  faced 
with  genuinely  possible  alternatives  we  have 
a  right  to  accept  and  believe  that  one  whose 
acceptance  will  contribute  most  to  our  moral 
life.  Here  and  elsewhere,  moreover,r James 
shows  that  in  morality  and  metaphysics  and 
religion,  as  well  as  in  science,  we  are  justi- 
fied in  testing  the  truth  of  a  belief  by  its 
usefulness. 

The  second  and  probably  the  more  im- 
portant source  of  pragmatism  is  the  modern 
scientific  view  of  the  meaning  of  hypotheses. 
Hypotheses,  "  natural  laws,"  scientific  gener- 
alizations, etc.,  are,  as  most  scientists  now 
maintain,  merely  short-hand  expressions  of 
human  experience.  They  are  handy  ways 
of  telling  us  what  has  happened  or  what  we 
may  expect.  They  are  not  so  much  de- 
scriptions of  an  outer  and  independent  "  na- 


14  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

ture  "  as  ways  of  summarizing  and  explaining 
our  experience.  Their  whole  meaning  is  ex- 
hausted after  they  have  told  us  (directly  or 
indirectly)  how  things  act  upon  us  and  how 
we  react  upon  things.  That  I  may  be  sure 
not  to  misrepresent  the  modern  logic  of 
science  as  pragmatism  understands  it,  let 
me  make  use  of  a  sentence  from  Ostwald, 
quoted  with  approval  by  Professor  James  in 
his  recent  book. 

"  All  realities  influence  our  practice,  and 
that  influence  is  their  meaning  for  us.  I  am 
accustomed  to  put  questions  to  my  classes  in 
this  way:  In  what  respects  would  the  world 
be  different  if  this  alternative  or  that  were 
true?  If  I  can  find  nothing  that  would  be- 
come different,  then  the  alternative  has  no 
sense."  ^ 

In  a  somewhat  similar  spirit  Karl  Pear- 
son defines  a  law  of  science  (or  of  "  nature  ") 
as  "a  resume  in  mental  shorthand,  which 
replaces  for  us  a  lengthy  description  of  the 
sequences  among  our  sense  impressions."  * 

^  Quoted  by  James  in  "  Pragmatism,"  p.  48. 
'  *'  Grammar  of  Science,"  p.  87. 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  15 

The  scientist,  in  short,  sees  that  his  hypoth- 
eses and  laws  ultimately  get  all  their  mean- 
ing from  our  experience.  And,  moreover,  he 
no  longer  regards  them  purely  as  ends  in 
themselves;  rather  are  they  now  his  instru- 
ments by  the  use  of  which  human  action  may 
profitably  be  guided.  Hence  he  is  less  con- 
cerned than  were  his  predecessors  with  the 
question  whether  his  hypotheses  are  true; 
what  concerns  him  most  is  their  usefulness. 
His  great  question  concerning  any  proposed 
generalization  is.  Does  it  work?  And  this 
for  two  reasons:  in  the  first  place,  because 
its  working  is  practically  more  important  to 
him  than  its  merely  theoretical  truth;  and 
secondly,  because  the  only  test  he  has  for  its 
truth  is  its  successful  working.  Unless  it 
works,  he  has  no  reason  to  believe  it  true. 
Moreover,  as  truth  and  usefulness  are  both 
forms  of  value,  the  scientist  who  has  no  time 
nor  fondness  for  what  he  calls  "  logic  chop- 
ping" has  a  tendency  to  identify  the  two, 
without  asking  himself  too  curiously  whether 
his  hypothesis  is  true  because  it  is  useful  or 
useful  because  it  is  true. 


1 6  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

It  was  from  this  view  of  the  nature  of 
scientific  hypotheses  that  pragmatism,  in  the 
more  technical  sense,  took  its  rise.  The 
name  originated  with  Mr.  C.  S.  Pierce,  who 
in  1878  published  his  epoch-making  article 
(for  so  it  turned  out  to  be)  entitled  "  How  to 
make  our  Ideas  Clear."  ^  In  this  paper  Mr. 
Pierce  laid  down  the  thesis  that  the  whole 
meaning  of  any  object  consists  in  the  habit 
or  reaction  it  establishes  or  induces  (directly 
or  indirectly)  in  us.  "  Consider  what  effects 
which  might  conceivably  have  practical  bear- 
ings we  consider  the  object  of  our  concep- 
tion to  have.  Then  our  conception  of  these 
effects  is  the  whole  of  our  conception  of  the 
object.'"^  The  word  "practical"  Mr.  Pierce 
is  here  using  in  its  strict  and  etymological 
sense,  as  referring  to  action.^  Thus  we  are 
told  that  to  develop  the  meaning  of  a 
thought  "  we  have  simply  to  determine  what 
habit  it  induces,  for  what  a  thing  means  is 
simply  what  habit  it  involves."*     "There  is 

^  In  the  Popular  Science  Monthly^  Vol.  XII,  pp.  286-302. 
'  P-  293-        '  From  the  Greek  Trpay/xo,  action.        *  p.  292. 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  \^ 

no  distinction  of  meaning  so  fine  as  to  con- 
sist in  anything  but  a  possible  difference  of 
practice."^  Quite  in  line  with  this  view  of 
the  practical  nature  of  meaning  is  Professor 
Dewey's  use  of  the  word  idea  as  synonymous 
with  "  plan  of  action  "  or  "  intention  to  act  in 
a  certain  way."  ^ 

Now  the  assertion  (if  intended  to  be  taken 
literally)  that  all  distinction  of  meaning  con- 
sists in  a  possible  difference  of  practice  cannot 
be  allowed  to  go  unchallenged.  It  may  be 
true  that  most  concepts  and  beliefs  —  or,  if 
you  insist,  that  all  concepts  and  beliefs  — 
result  ultimately  in  action.  From  that  it 
does  not  follow  that  all  their  meaning  con- 
sists in  such  resulting  action.  Doubtless 
much  of  their  meaning  does  consist  in  that.  — 
My  concept  of  an  object  is  largely  made  up 
of  the  way  I  should  act  in  its  presence.  As 
Royce  has  well  said,  I  do  not  know  the 
meaning  of  ''lion''  if  I  think  it  an  animal  I 
might  pat  on  the  head,  saying,  "  Nice  little 

1  p.  293. 

2  Cf.,  for  instance,  Mind,  Vol.  XVI,  pp.  335-336,  and 
Jour,  of  Phil.,  Vol.  V,  p.  88,  etc. 


1 8  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

lion."  —  But  though  this  is  true,  there  re- 
mains always  in  our  concepts  and  beliefs  a 
group  of  characteristics  which  are  not  to  be 
reduced  to  any  reactions  or  habits  of  our 
own.  These  may  be  of  as  many  sorts  as 
there  are  kinds  of  experience  or  psychic 
states  in  addition  to  action.  Sensational  and 
emotional  facts  are  of  course  the  most  obvi- 
ous. The  distinction  between  a  red  house 
and  a  green  house  does  not  consist  in  a  dif- 
ference of  practice.  Even  granted  there  is  a 
difference  in  practice  or  "attitude"  resulting, 
that  would  not  constitute  the  whole  of  the  dis- 
tinction. "  Practice  "  surely  cannot  be  taken 
to  mean  the  whole  of  experience.  (If  it  were 
so  taken,  Mr.  Pierce's  expressions  about  it 
would  become  the  most  absurdly  obvious 
truisms.)  But  if  it  be  not  the  whole  of  experi- 
ence, there  is  no  good  reason  for  insisting  that 
it  is  the  only  type  of  experience  which  contrib- 
utes anything  toward  the  meaning  of  ideas. 

This  point  is  so  obvious  that  I  surely  need 
not  labor  it  further.  And  I  am  made  still 
more  confident  that  I  may  be  relieved  of  this 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  19 

ungrateful  task  by  the  fact  that  Professor 
James  long  ago  saw  this  weakness  in  Mr. 
Pierce's  formulation  of  pragmatism,  and 
therefore  "  transmogrified  "  it  (as  Pierce 
puts  it)  and  laid  the  foundations  of  his 
own  pragmatism  in  more  inclusive  terms. 
In  his  famous  California  Address  of  Au- 
gust 26,  1898,  —  which  we  might  almost  call 
the  birthday  of  pragmatism,  —  he  says :  — 

"  I  think  myself  that  it  [the  principle 
of  pragmatism]  should  be  expressed  more 
broadly  than  Mr.  Pierce  expresses  it.  .  .  .  I 
should  prefer  to  express  Pierce's  principle 
by  saying  that  the  effective  meaning  of 
any  philosophic  proposition  can  always  be 
brought  down  to  some  particular  conse- 
quence in  our  future  practical  experience, 
whether  active  or  passive;  the  point  lying 
rather  in  the  fact  that  the  experience  must 
be  particular  than  in  the  fact  that  it  must 
be  active."  ^  This  interpretation  of  the  term 
practical  as  meaning  concrete  and  particular 
rather    than    as    referring    to    action,    Pro- 

^Jour.  of  Phil.,  Vol.  I,  p.  674.     Italics  mine. 


20  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

lessor  James  has  consistently  maintained 
ever  since.^ 

Taking  this  modified  and  enlarged  state- 
ment of  the  pragmatic  view  of  meaning, 
let  us  try  to  see  exactly  what  it  amounts  to. 
As  I  understand  it,  pragmatism  aims  by  it 
to  do  two  things.  First,  it  seeks  to  give 
us  a  definite,  exact,  and  technical  doctrine 
of  the  nature  of  meaning  —  to  show  us  what 
meaning  consists  in  and,  therefore,  when  it 
is  present  and  when  absent.  And,  sec- 
ondly, by  means  of  this  doctrine,  it  aims  to 
formulate  for  us  a  method  of  choosing  our 
problems,  which  shall  eliminate  for  us  a 
number  of  meaningless  questions  and  help 
us  to  see  what  is  worth  discussing  and  what 
is  not.  With  these  aims  in  view,  let  us  now 
examine  some  of  the  more  carefully  worded 
statements  of  the  pragmatic  doctrine. 

In  Baldwin's  "  Dictionary  of  Philosophy," 
Professor     James     defines     pragmatism     as 

^  Cf.  his  definition  of  pragmatism  in  Baldwin's  Dictionary 
and  his  article,  "  The  Pragmatic  Account  of  Truth,"  in  the 
Phil.  Rev.  for  January,  1908,  especially  p.  14.  Also  "  Prag- 
matism," Lecture  II,  passim. 


MEANING   AND   METHOD  21 

"the  doctrine  that  the  whole  'meaning' 
of  a  conception  expresses  itself  in  practical 
consequences,  consequences  either  in  the 
shape  of  conduct  to  be  recommended  or 
in  that  of  experiences  to  be  expected,  if 
the  conception  be  true ;/  which  conse- 
quences would  be  different  if  it  were 
untrue,  and  must  be  different  from  the 
consequences  by  which  the  meaning  of 
other  conceptions  is  in  turn  expressed. 
If  a  second  conception  should  not  appear 
to  have  other  consequences,  then  it  must 
really  be  only  the  first  conception  under  a 
different  name." 

The  fundamental  postulate  of  "  imme- 
diate empiricism "  (a  pseudonym  for  prag- 
matism) is,  according  to  Professor  Dewey, 
just  this :  "  that  things  are  what  they  are 
experienced  as  being;  or  that  to  give  a 
just  account  of  anything  is  to  tell  what 
that  thing  is  experienced  to  be."  "  The 
real  significance  of  this  principle  is  that  of 
a  method  of  philosophical  analysis.  If  you 
wish  to  find  out  what  any  philosophic  term 


22  WHAT  IS   PRAGMATISM? 

means,  go  to  experience  and  see  what  it  is 
experienced  as'' ^ 

In  the  same  spirit  Papini  writes :  "  The 
meaning  of  theories  consists  uniquely  in  the 
consequences"  which  those  who  beHeve  them 
true  may  expect  from  them."^  Dr.  Schiller 
puts  it  thus :  "  To  say  that  a  truth  has 
consequences  and  that  what  has  none  is 
meaningless,  means  that  it  has  a  bearing 
upon  some  human  interest.  Its  'conse- 
quences '  must  be  consequences  io  some 
one  for  some  purpose.  If  it  is  clearly 
grasped  that  the  '  truth '  with  which  we 
are  concerned  is  truth  for  man  and  that 
the  '  consequences '  are  human  too,  it  is 
really  superfluous  to  add  either  that  the 
consequences  must  be  practical  or  that 
they  must  be  good."^ 

Owing  to  a  misunderstanding  of  some 
of  the   pragmatists'    statements,   they   have 

1  "  The  Postulate  of  Immediate  Empiricism,"  four,  of 
Phil.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  397  and  399. 

' "  Introduzione  aJ  Pragmatismo,"  Leonardo,  February, 
1907,  p.  28. 

'  "Studies  in  Humanism,"  p.  5. 


i 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  23 

been  accused  of  including  among  the 
'  consequences '  that  give  meaning  only- 
such  as  are  practical  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  word,  —  bread  and  butter  con- 
sequences one  might  call  them.  Put  in 
this  bald  and  sweeping  way,  this  criticism 
is  based  on  a  radical  misunderstanding  of 
pragmatism.  All  the  leading  pragmatists 
insist  that  among  these  *  practical  conse- 
quences '  they  include  such  things  as 
logical  consistency,  intellectual  satisfaction, 
harmony  of  mental  content,  etc.  James 
has  more  than  once  made  the  statement 
that  to  him  practical  means  simply  par- 
ticular or  concrete;'^  and  Schiller  has  fre- 
quently pointed  out  that  what  are  commonly 
called  theoretical  consequences  are  prac- 
tical in  his  broad  use  of  the  word,  and 
that,  in  fact,  "  all  consequences  are  prac- 
tical sooner  or  later."  ^  If  all  consequences 
are  practical  sooner  or  later,  it  is  at  first, 
indeed,    a   little    hard  to  see  why  so  much 

1  a.  Jour,  of  Phil.,  Vol.  I,  p.  674;  Phil.  Rev.,  Vol.  XVII, 
pp.  14  and  If.  2  «  Studies  in  Humanism,"  p.  6. 


24  WHAT  IS   PRAGMATISM? 

emphasis  should  be  laid  upon  their  being 
practical,  or  why  so  much  ado  should  be 
made  over  the  word ;  it  would  seem  to  be 
something  like  a  distinction  without  a  dif- 
ference, rather  useless  as  a  guide  or  tool, 
and  hence  most  unpragmatic.  Moreover, 
there  are  passages  in  which  the  pragmatists 
seem  to  forget  their  own  broad  use  of  the 
word  practical,  and  to  condemn  certain 
"  intellectualistic "  questions  as  unworthy 
of  discussion  because  far  removed  from 
our  "  practical "  needs.  And  it  must  also 
be  added  that  while  the  pragmatists  usually 
recognize  the  value  of  our  theoretical  in- 
terests, they  insist  that  in  the  last  analysis 
this  value  is  entirely  dependent  on  the 
"  practical "  in  the  narrower  sense  of  the 
term,  —  that  our  intellectual  activities  get 
all  their  worth  ultimately  from  the  fact 
that  they  guide  and  influence  the  reaction 
of  the  individual  upon  the  environment. 
This  is  what  Dr.  Schiller  really  has  in 
mind  when  he  says,  "all  consequences  are 
practical  sooner  or  later."      It  would  seem, 


MEANING   AND   METHOD  2$ 

therefore,  that  the  "  bread  and  butter "  criti- 
cism is  not  altogether  without  foundation. 
Of  this,  however,  I  hope  to  have  more  to  say 
at  another  time.  For  the  present  the  impor- 
tant thing  for  us  to  note  is  the  fact  that  prag- 
matism is  not  justly  open  to  the  charge 
of  completely  disregarding  our  theoretic 
interests,  —  no  matter  how  it  may,  later  on, 
interpret  them. 

And  now  let  us  come  to  closer  quarters 
with  the  pragmatic  doctrine  of  meaning. 
There  are  one  or  two  points  in  it  which 
have  never  been  clear  to  me,  and  which,  so 
far  as  I  am  aware,  no  pragmatist  writer  has 
attempted  to  clear  up.  As  these  points  are 
vital  to  our  problem,  I  must  have  more  light 
on  them  before  I  know  whether  I  am  a  prag- 
matist or  not.  So  let  us  return  for  a  moment 
to  our  definitions.  I  repeat:  According  to 
Professor  James,  "the  meaning  of  any  phil- 
osophical proposition  can  always  be  brought 
down  to  some  particular  consequence  in 
our  future  practical  experience."  According 
to    Dr.  Schiller,   the  "  consequences "   must 


26  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

be  "  consequences  to  some  one./or  some  pur- 
pose." Now  I  ask  (and  it  is  an  important 
question),  What  does  James  mean  by  ''our 
experience  "  ?  To  whom  does  Schiller  refer 
by  the  words  "  some  one  "  ?  Obviously  there 
are  three  possible  interpretations.  The  prag- 
matist  may  mean,  namely,  that  only  that  con- 
cept or  theory  has  meaning  which  makes  a 
("practical")  difference  (i)  to  me,  the  individ- 
ual, or  (2)  to  all  human  beings  of  all  times,  or 
(3)  to  all  actual  or  possible  rational  or  senti- 
ent beings.  If  the  pragmatist  theory  is  to  be  of 
any  help  to  us  whatever,  we  must  know  which 
of  these  three  positions  it  takes.  In  the  lack, 
therefore,  of  any  authoritative  statements 
on  this  subject  from  the  pragmatists,  let  us 
examine  each  of  these  possible  positions  in 
turn  for  ourselves. 

The  first  position  suggested  above  may, 
I  suppose,  be  dismissed  at  once.  It  is  most 
unlikely  that  any  pragmatist  will  hold  that 
only  that  has  any  meaning  which  has  con- 
sequences in  the  shape  of  conduct  or  experi- 
ences in  his  own  individual  life  and  mind. 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  27 

For  even  if  one  should  hold  so  preposterous 
a  position,  he  could  scarcely  give  it  out  seri- 
ously as  a  philosophic  method.  The  ques- 
tion whether  there  will  be  a  railway  to  the 
north  pole  five  hundred  years  hence  can  cer- 
tainly not  be  expressed  in  consequences  to 
me  as  an  individual,  "  either  in  the  shape  of 
conduct  to  be  recommended  or  in  that  of 
experiences  to  be  expected."  And  yet  the 
question  certainly  has  meaning,  because  its 
consequences  may  be  expressed  in  the  con- 
duct or  experience  of  some  one  else.  For 
the  same  reason  various  questions  of  ancient 
history  have  meaning,  even  for  me.  Nor  can 
we  logically  stop  short  of  the  whole  human 
race,  in  interpreting  the  meaning  of  "  some 
one." 

But  what  justification  have  we  for  stop- 
ping here }  How  can  we  logically  disregard 
the  real  or  possible  experiences  or  any  real 
or  possible  sentient  beings  ?  Would  there 
be  no  meaning  in  saying  that  an  ichthyo- 
saurus, who  perished  ages  before  the  birth  of 
the  first  man,  suffered  pain  or  perceived  the 


28  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

light?  Is  there  now  no  memting  in  Mr. 
Percival  Lowell's  assertion  that  there  are 
sentient  and  rational  beings  on  Mars  ?  There 
is,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  not  a  single  detail  of 
any  human  experience  that  would  in  any  way 
be  different,  whichever  side  of  these  ques- 
tions you  should  take.  And  yet  the  ques- 
tions certainly  have  a  meaning,  and  have  a 
meaning  to  us,  because  they  have  conse- 
quences in  the  conduct  and  experiences  of 
real  or  possible  sentient  beings  ;  namely,  the 
ichthyosaurus  and  the  Martians. 

The  consequences  which  give  meaning, 
therefore,  cannot  be  confined  to  the  human 
race,  but  must  include  all  those  which  occur 
in  the  experience  of  any  sentient  creatures. 
If  from  this,  however,  we  are  tempted  to  con- 
clude that  there  is  nothing  unique  or  original 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  pragmatist,  he  may 
remind  us  that  we  have  as  yet  failed  to  note 
one  of  its  most  important  characteristics. 
The  "  consequences  "  which,  according  to 
pragmatism,  alone  give  meaning  are  "  conse- 
quences in  OMX  future  practical  experience." 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  29 

It  is  not  past  nor  present  consequences,  but 
"conduct  to  be  recommended''  "experiences 
to  be  expected','  that  count  in  giving  signifi- 
cance to  a  proposition.  A  good  deal  is  made, 
first  and  last,  in  various  pragmatic  writings, 
of  this  conception  that  it  is  only  in  the  future 
consequences  that  meaning  resides,  and  it 
will  therefore  be  worth  our  while  to  consider 
it  in  some  detail.  This  we  can  best  do  by- 
applying  it  to  a  concrete  example.^ 

The  example  I  shall  choose  is  the  one 
which  appears  most  often  in  Professor 
James's  writings^  as  an  illustration  of  the 
pragmatist  doctrine  of  meaning.  "  Imagine," 
says  Professor  James,  "  the  entire  contents 
of  the  world  to  be  once  for  all  irrevocably 
given.     Imagine  it  to  end  this  very  moment, 

^This  same  emphasis  upon  the  future  is  implicit  (as  Pro- 
fessor Montague  has  shown)  in  the  pragmatic  attempt  to 
make  truth  only  a  kind  of  goodness. 

^  It  occurs  both  in  the  California  Address  and  in  "  Prag- 
matism "  (from  which  I  here  quote  it,  p.  96),  and  we  would 
seem,  therefore,  to  be  justified  in  taking  it  as  a  typical  illustra- 
tion of  pragmatic  meaning  —  provided,  of  course,  that  we  do 
not  raise  against  it  the  criticism  forestalled  by  Professor  James 
himself  in  his  "Pragmatic  Account  of  Truth,"  Phil.  Rev., 
Vol.  XVII,  p.  s,  note. 


30  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

and  to  have  no  future ;  and  then  let  a  theist 
and  a  materialist  apply  their  rival  explana- 
tions to  its  history.  The  theist  shows  how 
a  God  made  it;  and  the  materialist  shows, 
and  we  will  suppose  with  equal  success,  how 
it  resulted  from  blind  physical  forces.  Then 
let  the  pragmatist  be  asked  to  choose  be- 
tween their  theories.  How  can  he  apply 
his  test  if  the  world  is  already  completed  ? 
Concepts  are  things  to  come  back  into  ex- 
perience with,  things  to  make  us  look  for 
differences.  But  by  hypothesis  there  is  to 
be  no  more  experience,  and  no  possible  dif- 
ferences can  be  looked  for.  Both  theories 
have  shown  all  their  consequences,  and  by 
the  hypothesis  we  are  adopting  these  are 
identical.  The  pragmatist  must  conse- 
quently say  that  the  two  theories,  in  spite 
of  their  different-sounding  names,  mean  ex- 
actly the  same  thing,  and  that  the  dispute 
is  purely  verbal."^ 

The  point  of  this  illustration  is,  of  course, 

^  Professor  James  adds  here  a  parenthetical  sentence 
which,  if  taken  as  in  any  sense  limiting  or  modifying  his  illus- 
tration, destroys  the  entire  force  of  his  argument.  I  have 
therefore  omitted  it. 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  3 1 

to  show  that  it  is  only  in  y^^/^r^  consequences 
that  genuine  meaning  can  reside.  Now,  in 
the  first  place,  it  is  important  to  note  that, 
with  the  pragmatist  view,  and  under  the  sup- 
posed conditions, — the  end  of  the  world, — 
any  question  of  past  or  present  fact  would 
necessarily  be  unmeaning.  The  theistic- 
materialistic  controversy  is  not  peculiar  in 
this  respect.  To  say  at  the  end  of  the  world, 
"  Professor  James  wrote  the  book  '  Pragma- 
tism,' "  and  to  say,  "  Mr.  Bradley  wrote  it," 
would  mean  exactly  the  same  thing,  since 
the  consequences  are  once  for  all  what  they 
are,  and  no  future  consequences  can  be  looked 
for.  That  this  must  be  true  of  all  questions, 
no  matter  how  full  of  meaning  they  now 
seem  to  us,  follows  necessarily  from  the  very 
nature  of  the  case,  once  you  admit  the  prag- 
matic doctrine.  For  if  all  meanings  can  be 
brought  down  to  consequences  "  in  our 
future  practical  experience,"  and  if,  by  hy- 
pothesis, we  have  no  future  practical  experi- 
ence, it  must  follow,  as  the  night  the  day, 
that  there  can  no  longer  be  any  meaning  in 
anything. 


32  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

And  it  must  also  be  noted  that  this  con- 
clusion not  only  will,  according  to  pragma- 
tism, hold  true  at  the  end  of  the  world  for  all 
questions,  but  that,  on  the  same  principles, 
it  must  also  hold  true  of  many  questions 
even  now.  To  take  a  very  commonplace 
example :  suppose  three  gentlemen  discuss- 
ing after  dinner  the  age  of  the  wine  they 
have  been  drinking.  One  of  them  says  that 
it  is  three  years  old,  one  that  it  is  thirteen. 
Reasons  are  given  by  both,  but  neither  can 
prove  his  point  to  the  satisfaction  of  the 
other.  The  dispute  is  referred  to  the  third 
gentleman,  who  happens  to  be  a  pragmatist. 
How  can  he  apply  his  test,  since  the  wine, 
having  become  once  for  all  what  it  was,  has 
now  been  drunk,  and  the  bottle  is  empty.? 
Both  theories  have  shown  all  their  con- 
sequences, and  these  are  identical.  "  The 
pragmatist  must  consequently  say  that  the 
two  theories,  in  spite  of  their  different-sound- 
ing names,  mean  exactly  the  same  thing," 
that  to  say  the  wine  is  three  years  old  is  only 
another  way  of  saying  it  is  thirteen  years  old. 


MEANING   AND   METHOD  33 

and  that  the  dispute  is  purely  verbal.  In  like 
manner,  the  date  of  Sargon  I,  the  authorship 
of  the  Pentateuch,  the  question  of  the  Greek 
tactics  at  Salamis,  all  being  without  future 
consequences  to  us,  must  be  for  the  pragma- 
tist  absolutely  meaningless.  In  short,  from 
history,  geology,  biology,  astronomy,  —  from 
every  field  of  human  thought,  —  come  ques- 
tions over  which  scholars  are  spending  years 
of  research,  yet  which  are  certainly  even 
now  fully  as  meaningless  as  the  theistic- 
materialistic  controversy  will  be  at  the  end 
of  time,  and  which  therefore  according  to 
the  pragmatist  doctrine  are  purely  verbal 
disputes.^ 

The  response  may  be  made  that  the  hy- 
potheses and  questions  just  referred  to  have 
pragmatic  consequences  in  the  sense  of  fit- 
ting in  more  or  less  well  with  our  otherwise 

^  By  the  above  I  do  not,  of  course,  mean  that  no  pragma- 
tist has  a  right  to  a  past  fact ;  I  simply  wish  to  point  out  that 
he  has  no  right  to  one  so  long  as  he  sticks  to  his  assertion 
that  all  meaning  is  confined  to  future  consequences,  and  more 
especially  to  the  interpretation  of  this  assertion  exemplified 
by  James's  illustration  of  the  end  of  the  world. 


34  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

grounded  beliefs,  and  hence  producing  greater 
or  less  mental  harmony.  But  the  answer  to 
this  is,  in  the  first  place,  that  this  can  be  the 
case  only  on  condition  that  these  questions 
and  hypotheses  already  have  meaning.  Their 
harmonizing  with  our  other  beliefs  presup- 
poses their  meaning  and  does  not  produce 
it,  —  hence  their  meaning  does  not  consist 
in  these  consequences.  And  in  the  second 
place,  if  this  answer  of  the  pragmatist  holds 
of  the  questions  I  have  suggested,  it  holds 
equally  well  of  the  materialistic-theistic  con- 
troversy at  the  end  of  the  world  and  of  every 
question  which  rationalistic  philosophers  are 
to-day  discussing.  There  is  scarcely  a  ques- 
tion seriously  raised  to-day  by  any  school  of 
philosophy  so  "  intellectualistic "  that  it  is 
lacking  in  consequences  of  intellectual  har- 
mony, hence  not  one  which  the  pragmatist 
formula,  if  thus  broadly  interpreted,  would 
rule  out. 

Pragmatism  must  choose  between  the 
broad  and  the  narrow  interpretation  of  its 
doctrine.     If  it  chooses   the   latter,  it   must 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  35 

maintain  explicitly  that  only  that  has  mean- 
ing which  (i)  has  consequences  in  the  expe- 
rience or  conduct  of  us  human  beings,  or  (2) 
has  future  consequences  for  some  one,  or  (3) 
has  both.  Some  of  the  expressions  used  by 
the  pragmatists  seem  clearly  to  show  that 
they  prefer  the  narrow  interpretation.  But, 
as  I  think  must  now  be  clear  to  you  all,  this 
position  is  untenable.  For,  to  repeat,  (i) 
that  obviously  has  meaning  which  has  con- 
sequences to  any  conceivable  sentient  crea- 
ture. Though  theism  and  materialism 
should  have  identical  consequences  for  me 
and  for  all  human  beings,  they  certainly 
have  not  for  God  (whether  he  be  real  or 
hypothetical).  It  makes  a  difference  to  God 
whether  He  exists  or  not,  even  if  this  be  the 
last  moment  of  time.  And  there  is  no  more 
reason  for  ruling  out  God's  experience  or 
that  of  the  ichthyosaurus  or  the  Martian,  or 
of  Jupiter  or  Thor,  than  that  of  Adam  or  of 
Sargon  I.  Surely  I  know  what  I  mean 
when  I  speak  of  the  experiences  of  Betsy 
Prig  or  Sairey  Gamp  or  even  those  of  the 


36  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

doubly  mythological  Mrs.  Harris.  Whatever 
makes  a  difference  to  any  conceivable  sentient 
creature  has  at  least  some  meaning.  And 
(2)  it  is  impossible  to  see  why  only  future 
consequences  should  count,  and  past  ones 
give  no  meaning.  If  the  pragmatist  is 
unable  to  get  any  meaning  out  of  past  con- 
sequences, or  out  of  consequences  to  sen- 
tient beings  who  are  not  human,  that  is  his 
misfortune.  But  as  for  the  rest  of  us,  we 
know  perfectly  well  what  we  mean  when  we 
say  Mars  is  inhabited,  or  the  birds  preceded 
the  mammals,  quite  aside  from  any  conse- 
quences, future  or  past,  to  human  beings. 
And  in  like  manner,  were  this  the  last  mo- 
ment of  time  we  should  know  perfectly  well 
what  we  meant  by  saying,  The  world  is  due 
to  an  intelligent,  self-conscious  Being,  or, 
The  world  is  due  to  the  concourse  of  uncon- 
scious atoms  ;  and  we  should  know  also  that 
these  two  meanings  were  altogether  different. 
It  would  seem,  therefore,  that  pragmatism 
is  logically  forced  to  adopt  only  the  broadest 
possible    interpretation   of    its   doctrine,   an 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  37 

interpretation  which  could  be  expressed  as 
follows:  ^he  meaning  of  any  conception  ex- 
presses itself  in  the  past,  present,  or  future 
conduct  or  experience  of  actual  or  possible 
sentient  creatures.  And  if  this  is  the  prag- 
matist  doctrine,  it  certainly  is  sound.  But 
the  odd  thing  about  it  is  that  it  exhibits 
pragmatism  as  (so  far  forth)  nothing  but  a 
restatement  of  idealism.  If  this  be  prag- 
matism, we  shall  soon  find  the  subjectivists 
and  the  pan-psychists  joining  the  procession ; 
yes,  even  the  prophets  of  the  Absolute  will 
be  donning  pragmatist  colors  and  learning 
war  no  more.  The  lion  shall  eat  straw 
like  the  ox ;  and  James  and  Royce,  Dewey 
and  Lotze,  Schiller  and  Bradley  (!),  shall  lie 
down  together.  Only  the  radical  realists 
shall  be  left  out  of  the  love  feast. 

I  do  not  want  to  be  understood  as  seeking 
a  cheap  and  easy  victory  over  pragmatism, 
nor  as  desiring  to  ridicule  it.  What  I  want 
is  genuinely  to  understand  it.  And  I  seri- 
ously contend  that  pragmatism  either  must 
take    the    untenable    position    of     denying 


38  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

meaning  where  meaning  obviously  is,  or  else 
must  admit  that  there  is  nothing  unique  in 
its  doctrine.  It  either  stands  for  an  absurd- 
ity or  else,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  it  has  contrib- 
uted nothing  of  importance  to  the  problem 
in  question  and  has  merely  repeated  the  gen- 
eral view  of  idealism,  which  it  might  almost 
as  well  have  quoted  (in  somewhat  different 
words,  to  be  sure,  but  in  substance  and  with- 
out all  this  ado)  from  any  one  of  several 
passages  in  "Appearance  and  Reality." 
What  shall  we  say,  then,  to  these  things  ? 
Is  Bradley  also  among  the  pragmatists  ? 

If  any  pragmatist  or  pragmatist  proselyte 
has  consented  to  follow  me  thus  far,  he  will 
probably  say  at  this  point.  At  least  pragma- 
tism offers  a  practical  and  useful  method  for 
determining  what  philosophic  questions  are 
really  worth  discussing,  and  by  application  of 
this  method  we  shall  be  enabled  to  elimi- 
nate a  large  body  of  worthless  and  abstract 
problems  which  are  now  lumbering  up  our 
minds  to  no  useful  purpose.  This  method,  he 
would  probably  continue,  might  be  summed 


MEANING  AND  METHOD  39 

up  in  the  rule  never  to  discuss  anything 
unless  it  has  some  genuine  human  interest, 
unless  it  makes  a  real  difference  to  some  one. 
Now  if  by  this  rule  pragmatism  means, 
once  more,  simply  the  maxim  to  avoid  lo- 
gomachy, we  shall  certainly  say  Amen  to  its 
time-honored  admonition.  But  if  it  means 
something  more  than  this,  we  must  ask, 
What  is  really  meant?  Truly  we  should 
discuss  only  that  which  is  worth  discussing; 
but  who  is  to  determine  what  this  is  ?  And 
the  point  upon  which  we  are  here  most  in 
need  of  enlightenment  is  this :  Does  prag- 
matism include  among  its  "genuine  human 
interests  "  the  intellectual  desire  for  knowl- 
edge for  its  own  sake  ?  If  it  does  not,  then 
we  must  at  least  point  out  the  fact  that  "  in- 
tellectualistic  metaphysics "  is  not  the  only 
thing  tabooed.  A  large  proportion  of  the 
problems  of  higher  mathematics,  history, 
archaeology,  astronomy,  geology,  literary 
criticism,  etc.,  are  as  certainly  vetoed  and 
forbidden.  The  courses  in  our  universities 
must  be  cut  down  by  half.     For  in  every 


40  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

field  of  scholarly  inquiry  there  are  innumer- 
able questions  which  awaken  no  more  "  re- 
sponsive active  feelings "  in  "  us  practical 
Americans  "  and  call  for  no  more  "  particu- 
lar conduct  of  our  own  "  than  do  the  vari- 
ous theological  and  metaphysical  problems 
against  which  the  pragmatists  inveigh. 
The  distance  of  the  nearest  fixed  star,  the 
problems  of  the  higher  mathematics,  the  age 
of  the  Rig  Veda,  awaken  as  little  "  sense  of 
reality "  in  most  of  us  as  do  the  various 
"  philosophic  propositions  that  will  never 
make  an  appreciable  difference  to  us  in 
action."  One  and  all,  they  are  open  to  the 
same  reproach  of  not  "  making  any  differ- 
ence "  to  a  living  soul  —  except  the  differ- 
ence which  comes  with  the  satisfaction  of 
knowing.  But  by  what  right,  after  all,  shall 
these  things  be  declared  not  worth  discuss- 
ing? Surely  every  genuine  question  — 
every  question,  that  is,  which  has  meaning 
and  is  not  logomachy  —  is  worth  solving  to 
him  who  wishes  to  solve  it.  If  you,  per- 
sonally, are  not  interested  in  mathematics  or 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  41 

metaphysics,  by  all  means  steer  clear  of 
them.  But  it  is  surely  unworthy  of  the 
broad,  human,  and  empirical  spirit  that 
characterizes  all  true  pragmatists  to  attempt 
to  dogmatize  as  to  what  all  men  shall  find 
or  ought  to  find  interesting. 

In  fact,  if  the  question  be  thus  put,  the 
pragmatists  might,  perhaps,  say  that  the 
purely  theoretic  interest  should  be  taken 
into  account  and  recognized  as  one  of  the 
things  that  give  problems  their  value.  But 
if  this  is  the  case,  again  I  ask,  What  prob- 
lem, then,  is  ruled  out  beyond  mere  verbal 
disputes  which  all  would  rule  out?  How 
does  the  pragmatist  rule  or  method  assist  us 
in  choosing  our  problems  ?  Can  the  prag- 
matist name  us  one  single  problem  which 
philosophers  are  discussing  to-day  which 
should  not,  on  his  own  showing,  be  recog- 
nized as  worth  while  ?  Take,  as  a  concrete 
example,  the  most  extreme  case  thinkable, 
—  or,  letting  the  pragmatists  choose  for 
us,  consider  the  one  Professor  James  has 
selected  as  his  favorite  mark,  —  the  "  aseity " 


42  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

of  God.^  The  choice  was  excellent  for  the 
purpose,  for  it  seems  to  interest  but  few,  and 
the  name  sounds  remote  and  even  absurd. 
Yet  there  certainly  have  been  many,  and 
still  are  some,  who  would  genuinely  like  to 
know  whether  there  is  a  divine  Being  who 
derives  his  existence  from  himself,  or 
whether  everything  in  the  universe,  "  God  " 
included,  is  bound  on  the  weary  wheel  of 
external  derivation.  And  in  spite  of  the 
disrepute  into  which  Scholasticism  has 
brought  the  subject,  I  think,  on  the  whole, 
nearly  every  one  of  us  here  would  be  more 
genuinely  interested  in  knowing  about  the 
attributes  of  God  than  about  the  distances 
between  the  fixed  stars.  Of  course  the  dis- 
cussion of  these  theological  things  is  not  reli- 
gion. But  to  condemn  all  such  discussion 
because  it  is  not  this  that  "keeps  religion 
going"  is  like  condemning  astronomy  be- 
cause  it  does  not  give  us  light  and   heat. 

^  Cf.  James's  California  Address,  yb«r.  of  Phil.,  Vol.  I,  pp. 
680-681,  and  "  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  pp.  445- 
446. 


MEANING  AND   METHOD  43 

And,  to  conclude,  the  whole  matter  may  be 
put  in  the  form  of  a  dilemma :  If,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  various  questions  which  pragma- 
tism would  taboo  are  of  genuine  intellectual 
interest  to  any  one,  they  are,  on  pragmatist 
principles,  worth  his  investigation  and  dis- 
cussion. And  if,  on  the  other  hand,  they 
are  not  of  interest  to  any  one,  it  would  seem 
hardly  pragmatic  to  spend  breath,  ink,  and 
time  in  attempting  to  prevent  their  investi- 
gation. 

If,  therefore,  the  intellectual  desire  to 
know  be  admitted  as  a  pragmatic  interest,  I 
cannot  see  that  pragmatism  helps  us  one 
whit  in  the  selection  of  our  problems,  —  un- 
less, indeed,  we  are  to  take  seriously  the 
implication  sometimes  given  by  certain 
pragmatist  writers ;  namely,  that  only  those 
topics  are  worth  discussing  which  are  to 
their  taste.  This,  for  instance,  is  the  im- 
pression one  gets  on  reading  Papini,  The 
pragmatist,  he  tells  us,  will  "  not  concern 
himself  with  a  large  part  of  the  classical 
problems  of  metaphysics  (in  particular  with 


44  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

the  universal  and  rational  explanation  of  all 
things),  which  are  for  him  unreal  problems 
and  devoid  of  meaning.  .  .  .  He  will  have 
an  antipathy  for  all  forms  of  monism  .  .  . 
and  for  the  '  reality  '  of  the  ordinary  man.  .  .  . 
For  the  pragmatist,  no  metaphysical  hypoth- 
esis is  truer  than  another.  He  who  feels  the 
need  of  having  one  may  choose  according  to 
his  purposes  and  tastes."^  But  in  spite  of 
Papini,  most  pragmatists  (including  Papini 
himself)  have  a  metaphysic ;  and  certainly  no 
American  or  British  pragmatist  would  take 
seriously  the  suggestion  one  seems  to  get  out 
of  the  rather  dogmatic  article  from  which  I 
have  just  quoted  —  the  suggestion,  namely, 
of  an  Index  Expurgatorius,  to  be  issued  by 
a  pragmatic  pope,  proscribing  all  questions 
which  are  not  of  interest  to  him. 

It  is  disappointing  indeed  to  come  back 
from  our  long  search  thus  empty-handed. 
But  if  we  are  to  be  honest  with  ourselves,  I 
think    we    must    admit    that    pragmatism's 

^  "Introduzione  al  Pragraatismo,"  Leonardo,  February, 
1907,  pp.  28-30. 


MEANING   AND   METHOD  45 

much-vaunted  method,  if  it  is  to  save  itself 
from  absurd  dogmatism,  really  sifts  down  to 
the  following  rather  trifling  rule :  Never  dis- 
cuss a  question  which  has  absolutely  no 
interest  and  no  meaning  to  any  one.  Prag- 
matism's insistence  upon  the  concrete  and  its 
warnings  against  logomachy,  I  confess,  are 
admirable.  And  its  view  of  meaning  as  de- 
pendent on  some  07tes  experience  seems 
philosophically  sound.  But  both  of  these 
things  are  to  be  found  in  almost  every  school 
of  philosophy  and  are  far  too  common  to  be 
appropriated  by  any  one  group  of  thinkers 
as  their  peculiar  merit  or  message.  And 
when  pragmatism  attempts  to  go  beyond 
these  somewhat  commonplace  precepts,  it 
lands  in  dogmatism  and  absurdity. 

Meaning  and  method,  however,  are,  after 
all,  but  the  beginning  of  pragmatism.  Im- 
portant as  these  are  in  judging  it,  its  doc- 
trine of  truth  is  more  vital  still.  It  may  be, 
then,  that  here  we  shall  find  something  both 
unique  and  tenable,  —  a  genuine  and  val- 
uable   contribution    to    philosophy    and    to 


46  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

clear  thinking.  But  "  truth  "  is  a  large  and 
perplexing  question  (as  you  will  soon  see  to 
your  sorrow),  and  the  consideration  of  it 
must  therefore  be  postponed  to  the  next 
lecture. 


LECTURE    II 
THE    AMBIGUITY    OF    "TRUTH" 


LECTURE   II 

THE  AMBIGUITY  OF  "TRUTH"* 

Pragmatism  has  been  likened  by  one  of 
its  foremost  exponents  to  the  corridor  of  a 
hotel.  It  is  a  way  of  approach  to  a  number 
of  diverse  but  related  philosophic  doctrines, 
rather  than  itself  a  new  philosophy.  And 
yet,  in  spite  of  the  perfect  intellectual  free- 
dom and  non-conformity  of  the  pragmatists, 
all  or  nearly  all  of  them  would  insist  that 
there  are  two  or  three  important  articles 
of  faith  common  to  all  pragmatist  creeds ; 
and  that  the  most  important  of  these  is  the 
new  meaning  which  pragmatism  has  given 
to  the  word  truth.  This  new  theory  of 
truth  is  by  far  the  most  fundamental  and 
important  doctrine  yet  proposed  by  the 
new  movement.     It  gives  the  point  of  view 

^  Portions  of  this  and  the  following  lectures  appeared  in 
the  Jour,  of  Phil.,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  320-324,  and  Vol.  V,  pp. 
122-131. 

s  49 


50  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

from  which  the  pragmatist  sees  his  world, 
it  is  the  center  from  which  most  of  his 
other  doctrines  take  their  start.  It  is,  in 
fact,  even  more  Hke  the  corridor  of  a  hotel 
than  pragmatism  itself,  —  its  doctrine  of 
meaning  being  the  front  steps.  To  get 
at  any  of  the  other  pragmatist  doctrines 
one  must  first  of  all  pass  these.  The  ques- 
tion of  truth,  moreover,  is  even  more  impor- 
tant than  that  of  meaning,  and  is,  in  fact,  the 
most  fundamental,  the  most  crucial  point 
to  be  met  with  in  the  whole  pragmatic  prob- 
lem, and  a  thorough  understanding  of  it  is 
essential  to  all  our  subsequent  studies.  Prag- 
matism stands  or  falls  with  its  conception 
of  truth. 

Before  attempting  an  exposition  of  the 
new  meaning  assigned  to  this  word,  how- 
ever, it  may  be  well  to  remind  you  (what 
you  undoubtedly  know  perfectly  well)  that 
ever  since  Pilate's  time  the  word  truth 
has  been  notoriously  ambiguous.  Stop 
half  a  dozen  men  in  the  street  and  ask 
them.  What  is   truth .''   and   you  will  prob- 


THE   AMBIGUITY   OF   "TRUTH"  5 1 

ably  get  as  many  different  answers.  The 
number  of  ways  in  which  the  word  truth 
may  be  used  seems,  however,  to  be  reducible 
to  three,  and  a  clear  understanding  of  these 
and  of  the  distinctions  between  them  is 
absolutely  indispensable  to  any  one  who 
would  thoroughly  comprehend  pragmatism. 
This  lecture,  therefore,  will  be  devoted  to 
an  attempt  to  clear  up  this  rather  difficult 
subject,  and  to  explain  some  of  the  different 
meanings  given  to  the  word  truth  —  our 
exposition  and  criticism  of  the  more  techni- 
cal pragmatist  use  of  the  word  being  re- 
served for  the  next  lecture.  The  subject, 
I  say,  may  prove  difficult ;  yet  I  trust  it 
will  not  be  hopelessly  so.  For  it  is  my 
firm  belief  that  the  difficulties  which  it 
usually  presents  are  almost  entirely  due  to 
a  neglect  of  the  distinctions  referred  to, 
and  to  a  constant  and  unconscious  confusion 
between  the  different  senses  of  the  word 
truth. 

The   three   different   ways    in    which  the 
word  truth  is  commonly  used  are,  then,  the 


52  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

following:  (i)  as  a  synonym  for  "reality"; 
(2)  as  a  synonym  for  known  "  fact "  or 
verified  and  accepted  belief ;  (3)  as  the 
relation  or  quality  belonging  to  an  "  idea  " 
which  makes  it  "  true  "  —  its  trueness.  We 
shall  now  consider  each  of  these  in  their 
order.  ' 

The  first  of  these  uses  is  quite  common 
in  popular  speech.  The  word  is  thus  em- 
ployed as  synonymous  sometimes  with  the 
whole  of  reality,  more  often  with  a  part 
only ;  namely,  that  rather  indefinite  part 
which  in  popular  discourses  is  referred  to 
as  Infinite,  Eternal,  Changeless,  etc.  Nor 
is  the  identification  of  truth  with  reality 
confined  to  popular  speech ;  philosophers 
of  the  Platonic  and  Hegelian  type  —  the 
absolutists  in  general  —  have  often  a  ten- 
dency in  this  direction.  Truth  is  thus  re- 
garded as  "  objective,"  "  systematic,"  inde- 
pendent of  our  human  thinking,  and  as 
really  another  name  for  ultimate  reality. 
This  general  position  is  maintained,  for  in- 
stance, by    Mr.    Bradley   and    Mr.  Joachim. 


THE   AMBIGUITY   OF   "TRUTH"  53 

Thus  in  a  recent  article  ^  Mr.  Bradley  tells 
us  that  "  Truth  is  the  whole  Universe  realiz- 
ing itself  in  one  aspect."  Truth  and  reality 
must  be  identical,  for  were  there  any  dif- 
ference between  them,  truth  would  fall  short 
of  reality  and  so  fail  to  be  true.  Against 
this  view  of  truth  pragmatism  —  using 
especially  the  sword-like  pen  of  Dr.  Schiller, 
—  has  done  magnificent  battle,  and  has, 
in  my  opinion,  come  off  with  most  of  the 
spoils  of  war.  It  has  shown  the  confusion 
which  such  a  view  brings  into  our  termi- 
nology, its  lack  of  self-consistency,  and  the 
almost  inevitable  skepticism  consequent 
upon  it,  owing  to  its  "  dehumanizing "  of 
truth. 

In  all  this  pragmatism  is  decidedly  in  the 
right;  for  the  philosophic  identification  of 
truth  with  reality  seems,  to  me  at  least,  quite 
untenable,  and  the  popular  use  of  the  word 
in  this  sense  most  unfortunate.  Mr.  Bradley 
himself  has  shown  that  truth  "  in  passing 
over   into    reality"  ceases  to  be  mere  truth 

1  "On  Truth  and  Copying,"  J/m^,  April,  1907. 


54  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM  ? 

and  that  "truth  at  once  is  and  is  not  reality." 
In  short,  this  kind  of  reasoning,  so  far  from 
what  Professor  Dewey  calls  the  concrete 
situation,  is  most  unsatisfactory  and  inevita- 
bly develops  its  own  destructive  "dialectic." 

Nor  is  the  popular  use  of  "  truth  "  in  the 
sense  of  reality  any  more  satisfactory,  al- 
though not  open  to  the  same  logical  criti- 
cisms. Its  tendency  toward  vagueness, 
rhetoric,  and  a  capital  T  ought  to  be  enough 
to  condemn  it  in  the  eyes  of  all  those  who 
would  think  clearly.  To  use  the  mildest  of 
epithets,  it  is  at  least  exceedingly  unfortu- 
nate, both  because  of  its  haziness  and  also 
because  the  word  truth  is  badly  needed  else- 
where,—  a  remark  which  applies  to  both  the 
popular  and  the  philosophic  use  of  the  word 
referred  to.  The  English  language  is  none 
too  rich  in  clear-cut  philosophic  terms,  and 
it  is  most  unwise  and  most  conducive  to 
ambiguity  to  use  up  a  good  word  like  truth 
on  something  for  which  we  already  have 
another  good  word,  namely  reality.  For,  of 
course,  if  "truth"  is  to  mean  everything,  it 


THE  AMBIGUITY  OF  "TRUTH"  55 

will  end  by  meaning  nothing.  In  its  attack 
upon  the  identification  of  truth  with  reality, 
pragmatism  has,  therefore,  done  a  genuine 
service  to  the  cause  of  clear  thinking. 

The  second  general  meaning  commonly 
applied  to  the  word  truth  is  perfectly  clear- 
cut,  definite,  and  justifiable  —  its  identifica- 
tion, namely,  with  known  fact^  with  the  true 
and  more  or  less  completely  verified  beliefs 
that  go  to  make  up  the  mass  of  human 
knowledge.  That  twice  two  is  four,  that  the 
earth  revolves  upon  its  axis,  that  virtue  is  its 
own  reward,  —  these  we  speak  of  as  "  truths." 
In  like  manner,  we  speak  of  the  various 
"  truths  "  of  science  or  of  the  body  of  moral 
and  religious  ''  truths."  Or  we  may  go  still 
further,  and,  combining  all  the  general  and 
important  facts  known  to  the  race,  we  may 
speak  of  this  whole  as  truth,  —  or  even,  if 
you  like,  as  Truth.  A  capital  letter  is  no 
serious  danger  if  you  keep  your  eyes  open. 
Only  we  must  remember  that  here  as  else- 
where eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  safety; 
and  the   history  of  philosophy  shows  many 


56  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

examples  of  the  inherent  human  tendency 
toward  worship  manifesting  itself  in  an* 
apotheosis  of  this  very  capital  T.  Thus  it 
has  come  about  that  the  human  element  in 
all  the  truth  we  know  has  often  been  quite 
lost  from  sight.  Now  it  may  very  well  be  that 
there  is  an  Absolute  or  Divine  Mind,  and  that 
in  that  Mind  there  exist  all  manner  of  truths 
which  have  in  them  no  human  element.  It  is 
far  from  my  purpose  to  decry  monism  or  abso- 
lutism. But  certain  it  is  that  the  only  truths 
we  know  or  ever  can  know  contain  ipso  facto 
a  human  element,  and  that  this  element  can- 
not be  lightly  despised.  It  is  in  the  pointing 
out  of  just  this  fact,  in  the  emphasis  laid  upon 
just  this  human  side  of  human  truth,  that  the 
chief  merit  of  pragmatism  or  humanism  lies. 
It  may  indeed  be  seriously  questioned  whether 
the  "  intellectualists "  in  their  treatment  of 
truth  have  so  completely  left  out  of  account 
its  human  side  as  they  are  accused  of  doing. 
I  know  of  few  who  maintain  the  existence 
of  "truth  with  no  one  thinking  it,"  which 
pragmatists   often    refer   to    as    the    type   of 


THE   AMBIGUITY  OF   "TRUTH"  57 

truth  of  the  intellectuahsts.  There  are,  to 
be  sure,  a  few  EngHsh  thinkers  who  hold 
to  that  doctrine.  But  I  should  certainly 
challenge  the  assertion  that  this  is  the  dis- 
tinctive doctrine  of  the  non-pragmatist  and 
the  consequent  implication  that  in  attacking 
it  pragmatism  has  been  quite  original.  As 
a  non-pragmatist  I  repudiate  any  such 
doctrine.  "  Discarnate  truth,"  truths  which 
no  one,  not  even  an  Absolute,  thinks,  like 
Platonic  Ideas  in  an  abstract  empyrean,  are 
as  little  to  the  taste  of  most  non-pragmatists 
as  to  that  of  James,  Schiller,  and  Dewey. 
And  we  have  only  sincere  admiration  for  the 
brilliant  exposition  given  by  them  of  the 
contributions  which  we  men  make  to  our 
own  truth. 

In  his  admirable  paper  on  "  The  Ambigu- 
ity of  Truth,"  Dr.  Schiller  makes  a  useful 
distinction  between  those  beliefs  which  have 
not  yet  been  vindicated  and  those  which 
have  been  proved  true.  "  If  not  all  that 
claims  truth  is  true,  must  we  not  distinguish 
this  initial   claim   from  whatever  procedure 


58  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

subsequently  justifies  or  validates?  Truth 
therefore  will  become  ambiguous.  It  will 
mean  primarily  a  claim  which  may  or  may 
not  turn  out  to  be  valid.  It  will  mean, 
secondarily,  such  a  claim  after  it  has  been 
tested  and  ratified,  by  processes  which  it  be- 
hooves us  to  examine.  In  the  first  sense, 
as  a  claim,  it  will  always  have  to  be  regarded 
with  suspicion.  For  we  shall  not  know 
whether  it  is  really  and  fully  true,  and  we 
shall  tend  to  reserve  this  honorable  predicate 
for  what  has  victoriously  sustained  its 
claim."  ^  In  other  words,  at  least  two  things 
are  essential,  according  to  the  pragmatist, 
for  the  definition  of  "  a  truth"  in  the  full  and 
exact  sense  of  the  word  :  (i)  it  shall  be  a  claim 
which  some  one  makes,  a  belief  or  judgment 
which  some  one  holds ;  (2)  it  shall  have  been 
validated  and  verified  as  true.  A  claim  not 
yet  verified  is  not  yet  a  truth,  insists  the  prag- 
matist. And,  here  though  we  might  indeed 
quarrel  with  him,  we  need  not.  There  is  of 
course  an  obvious  difference  between  a  claim's 

1 "  Studies  in  Humanism,"  pp.  144-145. 


THE   AMBIGUITY  OF  "TRUTH"  59 

being  true  and  its  being  known  as  true ;  and 
hence,  if  one  cared  to  do  so,  one  might  very 
consistently  maintain  that  a  true  claim  is  "  a 
truth  "  even  if  not  yet  verified.  Such  an  ob- 
jection to  the  pragmatist's  definition,  however, 
would  be  largely  verbal,  and  upon  questions 
of  terminology  either  side  may  well  make 
concessions.  It  makes  but  little  difference 
whether  we  call  a  claim  which  is  true  but 
unverified  "  a  truth  "  or  merely  a  true  claim. 
And  as  it  is  my  earnest  desire  not  to  be 
hypercritical  but  to  go  with  the  pragmatist 
just  as  far  as  possible,  I  shall  agree  to  define 
"  a  truth "  as  a  true  claim  that  has  been 
verified.^ 

1  With  this  understanding  of  our  terminology,  therefore, 
the  non-pragmatist  need  not  and  does  not  insist  on  unverifi- 
able  truths,  though  he  does  insist  that  there  may  be  and 
doubtless  are  innumerable  beliefs  which  are  trite  though  as 
yet  unverified  or  even  unverifiable.  The  failure  to  grasp  this 
distinction  is  the  cause  of  Dr.  Schiller's  caricature  of  the  non- 
pragmatist  position.  Cf.  his  review  of  Professor  James's 
book  in  Mind,  Vol.  XVI,  p.  600.  The  non-pragmatist  is  not 
driven  to  assert  "  unknowables  "  in  any  other  sense  than  that 
there  doubtless  are  many  things  in  heaven  and  earth  that  we 
can  never  know  —  an  assertion  which,  I  suppose,  pragmatism 
would  hardly  deny. 


6o  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

So  much  being  agreed  and  understood,  let 
us  now  take  a  brief  survey  of  the  pragma- 
tist's  admirable  description  of  the  way  our 
truths  originate  and  grow.  In  doing  so,  how- 
ever, let  me  remind  you  of  the  importance 
of  keeping  in  mind  constantly  that  here 
there  is  as  yet  no  question  of  the  true- 
ness  of  a  claim  or  belief.  The  distinction 
between  "a  truth"  and  the  trueness  of  that 
truth  must  never  be  lost  from  sight. 

A  large  part  of  the  writings  of  the  three 
leading  pragmatists  is  taken  up  with  admir- 
able psychological  descriptions  of  "the  making 
of  truth."  For  being  part  of  the  content  of 
our  minds,  our  truths  have  a  natural  history, 
and  the  general  course  of  their  development 
may  be  clearly  traced.  Each  truth  which  you 
or  I  possess  originates  and  grows  within 
a  perfectly  concrete  situation  and  is  due  to 
perfectly  definite  conditions.  Our  beliefs 
are  intellectual  tools  which  serve  us  in  more 
or  less  useful  ways.  The  process  by  which 
they  get  themselves  verified  and  thus  cease 
to  be  mere  claims  and   become   truths,  the 


THE   AMBIGUITY  OF   "TRUTH"  6 1 

application  of  these  "  truths,"  and  the  modi- 
fications they  undergo,  —  all  this  can  be 
traced  within  the  stream  of  consciousness  as 
concrete  psychic  fact.  If  now  we  ask  our- 
selves how,  more  in  detail,  our  claims  are 
verified  and  proved  true,  we  find  that,  if  the 
answer  must  be  given  in  a  single  phrase,  the 
best  way  to  describe  what  happens  is  to  say 
that  those  claims  are  accepted  as  truths  which 
work,  which  are  useful,  which  combine  har- 
moniously with  our  previously  accepted 
truths.  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them. 
As  we  never  can  get  outside  of  our  own  ex- 
perience and  compare  our  truths  with  any- 
thing beyond  them,  the  best  if  not  the  only 
test  left  us  by  which  we  may  separate  the 
sheep  from  the  goats,  the  potential  truths 
from  the  invalid  claims,  is  to  see  which  of 
several  possible  combinations  of  claims  is  the 
most  self -consistent  and  inclusive ;  or,  if  it  be 
a  question  of  a  single  claim,  to  observe  how 
well  it  works,  how  far  it  aids  in  harmoniz- 
ing all  our  experience.  Thus  when  a  jury  is 
weighing  the  two  possible  views  of  the  evi- 


62  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

dence  presented  respectively  by  the  defense 
and  by  the  prosecution,  what  it  is  really 
about  is  an  endeavor  to  see  which  view  is 
most  consistent  with  itself  and  which,  at  the 
same  time,  is  able  to  interpret  and  harmonize 
the  largest  number  of  individual  claims.  Or 
when  a  scientist  is  trying  to  decide  whether 
an  hypothesis  is  true,  his  test  is  again  the 
question.  How  useful  is  it  in  harmonizing  all 
the  accepted  facts  and  leading  the  mind  out 
of  its  state  of  uncertainty  to  a  feeling  of  in- 
ner peace  and  intellectual  satisfaction  ?  The 
truth  is  that  which  works  best,  and  that  which 
works  best  is  the  truth. 

Successful  working  is  therefore  the  tag  or 
ear-mark  by  which  we  distinguish  the  true 
idea.  But,  as  you  doubtless  perceive,  this 
only  leads  us  to  the  more  fundamental  and 
difficult  question  as  to  what  we  mean  by  the 
idea's  being  true,  the  question  of  the  nature 
of  the  thing  tagged  or  marked.  For  it  is 
clear  enough  that  there  is  a  difference  be- 
tween a  thing  and  its  tag,  —  between  an 
object  and  the  sign  which  proves  to  us  the 


THE   AMBIGUITY   OF   "TRUTH"  63 

presence  of  that  object.  Although  we  have 
been  informed  how  to  tell  a  true  idea  when 
we  happen  upon  one,  we  must  still  ask  what 
is  meant  by  the  truth  of  the  idea,  what  it  is 
that  the  sign  of  it  signifies.  The  distinction 
between  a  thing  and  the  evidence  of  it,  be- 
tween an  object  and  its  tag,  is  doubtless  plain 
as  day  to  you  all ;  but  as  the  distinction  is  an 
extremely  important  one,  and  as  it  is  often 
overlooked,  I  shall,  in  good  pragmatist  fash- 
ion, seek  a  concrete  illustration  of  it  from  a 
realm  of  practical  life  far  removed  from  the 
abstractions  of  philosophy.  Let  us,  for  ex- 
ample, suppose  that  Mennen's  face  is,  as  he 
says,  upon  every  box  of  toilet  powder  made 
by  him.  The  presence  of  his  face  would, 
then,  be  a  good  test  by  which  to  determine 
whether  in  any  given  instance  we  have  the 
genuine  article  or  not.  But  the  important 
thing  about  the  powder,  after  all,  is  its  own 
nature  and  make-up  rather  than  the  pretty 
picture  associated  with  it ;  and  we  should 
hardly  say  that  the  contents  of  the  box  is 
what  it  is  because  its  cover  bears  the  image 


64  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

of  Mennen's  never-to-be-forgotten  face.  If  a 
pupil  asks  his  teacher  about  a  triangle,  the 
latter  may  refer  him  to  page  52  of  Loomis's 
Geometry  and  page  63  of  Wentworth's  for  a 
diagram,  and  the  pupil  may  learn  to  distin- 
guish a  triangle  from  a  square  in  this  way. 
But  even  if  the  triangle  were  figured  on  no 
other  pages  than  these,  one  would  not  define 
triangle  as  "the  figure  on  pages  52  and  63," 
nor  give  this  as  the  meanhig  of  the  term. 
In  other  words,  the  meaning  or  nature  of  a 
material,  a  quality,  a  relation,  is  one  thing; 
the  sign  by  which  you  make  sure  of  its  pres- 
ence is  another.  And,  in  like  manner  (to 
return  to  the  question  that  immediately  con- 
cerns us),  the  ear-mark  by  which  we  have 
now  learned  to  tell  a  true  idea  from  a  false 
one  does  not  answer  the  further  question, 
what  we  mean  by  its  being  true.  Doubtless 
ideas  are  proved  true  by  their  consequences, 
as  the  pragmatists  say;  but  when  we  prove 
them  true,  what  are  we  proving  ?  What  is  it 
that  such  a  process  of  verification  verifies  ? 
A   mere   psychological  description   of  what 


THE  AMBIGUITY   OF  "TRUTH"  65 

happens  within  our  experience  is  obviously 
here  quite  insufficient.  And  this  brings  us 
to  the  third  use  of  the  word  truth,  the  true- 
ness  of  a  belief.  To  put  it  tersely,  then,  what 
do  we  mean  when  we  say  that  an  idea  is 
true  ? 

To  this  question  there  are  certainly  two 
and  possibly  several  quite  distinct  answers. 
And  it  will  throw  light  on  the  real  meaning 
of  the  answer  which  pragmatism  gives  if  we 
first  consider  the  answer  which  pragmatism 
rejects,  —  the  interpretation,  namely,  given 
by  "  common  sense,"  or  "  intellectualism,"  or 
"  realism  "  (as  you  like).  This  interpretation 
commonly  goes  under  the  name  of  the  "  cor- 
respondence theory,"  and  runs  in  brief  some- 
what as  follows :  The  truth  relation,  or  the 
quality  of  trueness,  is  neither  a  part  of  our 
thought  or  experience,  nor  a  part  of  the  other 
reality  to  which  our  thought  refers,  but  is 
rather  a  relation  between  our  thought  and 
its  chosen  object,  between  our  idea  or  judg- 
ment and  the  thing  which  it  means.  And 
this  relation  is  simply  one  of  corresp07idence. 


66  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

A  caricature  of  the  theory  frequently  set  up 
by  its  opponents  maintains  that  correspo7idence 
must  mean  copying,  and  that  the  thought 
which  thus  "copies"  reality  is  a  sort  of  pho- 
tograph of  the  original ;  that  we  \\2mq. pictures 
of  things  in  our  heads,  and  that  if  the  pic- 
tures are  good  pictures  we  have  truth. 

Now  the  upholder  of  the  correspondence 
theory  will  agree  with  his  critics  that  the 
copy  theory  as  thus  described  would  deserve 
all  the  uncomplimentary  epithets  they  are  so 
able  in  devising  for  it.  Such  a  theory  would 
be  both  bad  psychology  and  bad  episte- 
mology.  For,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  obvious 
that  the  great  majority  of  all  those  thoughts 
which  can  be  called  either  true  or  false  are 
not  pictures ;  and  if  they  were,  it  is  hard  to 
see  how  their  simply  being  like  external 
things  could  make  them  true.  A  billiard 
ball  is  not  true,  no  matter  how  much  it  may 
resemble  another  billiard  ball.  Two  pains 
are  not  true,  though  they  be  as  like  as  two 
peas.  Whatever  truth  may  be,  it  is  at  any 
rate   something    more  than    chance    resem- 


THE   AMBIGUITY  OF   "TRUTH"  67 

blance.  The  knowing  thought  must  mean 
its  object,  must  choose  and  adopt  it,  and  once 
it  has  done  so  no  copying  will  be  necessary. 

The  real  common-sense  theory,  as  I  under- 
stand it,  may  then  be  stated  as  follows : 
"  Truth,"  or  the  relation  of  "  correspondence," 
means,  not  copying,  but  merely  this  simple 
thing,  that  the  object  of  which  one  is  thinking 
is  as  one  thinks  it.  Or,  to  put  the  same 
thing  in  other  words,  the  truth  or  trueness  of 
an  idea  is  its  conformity  to  fact. 

It  would  seem,  oddly  enough,  that  this 
very  obvious  and  natural  explanation  of  the 
meaning  of  the  truth  relation  is  the  one 
thing  in  the  universe  which  is  capable  of 
bringing  together  the  absolutist  and  the 
pragmatist.  Deadly  enemies  at  every  other 
point,  they  stand  manfully  shoulder  to 
shoulder  in  attacking  the  correspondence 
theory.  Whatever  else  truth  may  mean,  they 
are  agreed  it  shall  not  mean  this.  For  Mr. 
Bradley  it  is  far  too  simple,  and  for  Professor 
James,  apparently,  it  is  not  simple  enough. 
In  commenting  upon  the  formulation  of  the 


68  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

doctrine  just  given  (that  the  object  of  which 
one  is  thinking  is  as  one  thinks  it),  Professor 
James  finds  the  word  "  as  "  to  be  "  anything 
but  simple."  "  What  it  most  immediately 
suggests,"  he  continues,  "  is  that  the  idea 
should  be  like  the  object;  but  most  of  our 
ideas,  being  abstract  concepts,  bear  almost 
no  resemblance  to  their  objects.  ...  I  now 
formally  ask  .  .  .  what  this  '  as  'ness  in  itself 
consists  in  —  for  it  seems  to  me  that  it  ought 
to  consist  in  something  assignable  and  de- 
scribable  and  not  remain  a  pure  mystery."^ 
Paulsen  has  somewhere  remarked  that 
"  the  absurd  has  this  advantage  in  common 
with  truth,  that  it  cannot  be  refuted."  And 
it  might  be  added  that  the  most  ultimately 
simple  expression  of  the  commonest  fact  has 
this  disadvantage  in  common  with  the  self- 
contradictory,  that  it  cannot  be  explained. 
As  Dr.  Ewer  has  pointed  out  in  connection 
with  this  very  question  of  Professor  James's, 
"  We  recognize  similar  questions  about  in- 

1  "  Professor  Pratt  on  Truth,"  Jour,  of  Phil,  Vol.  IV, 
pp.  466-467. 


THE  AMBIGUITY   OF   "TRUTH"  69 

dubitable  facts  that  have  no  answer:  '  How 
can  a  body  move  ? '  '  How  can  a  body 
exclude  other  bodies  from  the  space  it 
occupies  ? '  '  How  can  one  event  follow 
another  ? '  .  .  ,  To  them  no  answers  can 
be  given  which  do  not  contain  the  very 
ideas  of  motion,  temporal  succession,  etc., 
that  are  under  fire.  Details  and  accessories 
of  the  process  may  be  elucidated,  but  the 
essential  character  is  implied  throughout."^ 
In  short,  it  is  the  very  simplicity  of  the  re- 
lation between  our  thought  and  the  thing 
of  which  we  are  thinking  that  makes  it  in- 
capable of  reduction  to  simpler  terms.  It 
may  be  a  "  pure  mystery  "  no  doubt ;  but  if 
so,  then  I  ask  in  turn  that  something  be 
named  me  which  is  not  a  mystery.  And 
even  if  the  nature  of  the  case  permitted  my 
accepting  Professor  James's  challenge  and 
naming  something  else  which  "this  'as'ness 
in  itself  consists  in,"  he  could  again  ask  the 
same  question  concerning  this  new  thing, 
and  so  ad  infinitum. 

i"The  Anti-realistic  'How?'">«^-  of  Phil,  Vol.  IV, 
p.  631. 


70  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

But  though  I  cannot  analyze  an  ulti- 
mately simple  relation  into  its  parts  and 
tell  what  '  as  'ness  consists  in,  it  will,  I  feel 
sure,  clear  up  the  matter  completely  to  the 
non-pragmatic  reader  if  I  apply  the  corre- 
spondence theory  of  truth  to  a  concrete  and 
very  commonplace  example.  John,  let  us 
say,  thinks  Peter  has  a  toothache  ;  the  ob- 
ject of  John's  thought  is  Peter's  present 
experience ;  and  as  a  fact  Peter  has  a  tooth- 
ache. And  John's  thought  is  true,  accord- 
ing to  the  correspondence  theory,  because  its 
object  is  as  he  thinks  it.  That  is  what  con- 
stitutes it  true,  that  is  the  meaning  of  its 
trueness.  And  I  confess  it  is  impossible 
for  me  to  see  how  anything  could  be  simpler 
than  this.  To  torture  it  into  some  sort  of 
mysterious  and  crude  "  copy  theory,"  and  to 
insist  upon  further  simplification  and  de- 
mand what  'as 'ness  consists  in,  seems  to 
me  a  manufacture  of  unnecessary  difficulties. 
At  any  rate,  if  this  explanation  of  the  mean- 
ing of  "  true "  be  not  simple  and  clear,  I 
despair  of  ever  making  anything  clear  to 
philosophers. 


THE   AMBIGUITY  OF  "TRUTH"  7 1 

But  lack  of  simplicity  is  not  the  only 
charge  brought  against  the  correspondence 
theory  by  pragmatism.  Leaving  this  ques- 
tion to  Professor  James,  Dr.  Schiller  attacks 
it  in  two  other  quarters.  In  the  first  place 
he  tells  us  that  this  view  of  truth  "  speedily 
leads  us  to  a  hopeless  impasse  once  the 
question  is  raised  —  How  are  we  to  know 
whether  our  '  truth '  '  corresponds '  or 
'  agrees  '  with  its  real  object  ?  For  to  decide 
this  question  must  we  not  be  able  to  com- 
pare '  thought '  and  '  reality,'  and  to  contem- 
plate each  apart  from  the  other }  This, 
however,  seems  impossible.  '  Thought '  and 
'  reality '  cannot  be  got  apart,  and  conse- 
quently the  doctrine  of  their  '  correspond- 
ence '  has  in  the  end  no  meaning.  We 
are  not  aware  of  any  reality  except  by  its 
representation  in  our  '  thought '  and  per 
contra,  the  whole  meaning  of  '  thought '  re- 
sides ultimately  in  its  reference  to  '  reality.'  "  ' 

By  the  above,  Dr.  Schiller  can  hardly 
mean  simply  that  all  reality  is  some   form 

^  "  Humanism,"  pp.  45-46. 


72  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

of  experience,  for  there  is,  of  course,  nothing 
to  prevent  two  independent  experiences  — 
my  thought  and  my  neighbor's  experience, 
for  instance  —  from  corresponding  (in  the 
sense  defined  above).  More  probably  Dr. 
Schiller  means  that  we  can  never  get  imme- 
diately at  any  reality  but  our  own  thought 
or  experience,  that  we  can  never  get  outside 
of  our  own  minds,  and  that  every  part  of 
reality  which  is  to  be  directly  grasped  by 
us  must  become  part  of  our  own  experience ; 
and  that,  hence,  we  are  not  able  to  compare 
and  contemplate  thought  and  reality  apart 
from  each  other.  If  I  am  right  in  this  in- 
terpretation, then  by  saying,  "  Thought  and 
reality  cannot  be  got  apart,"  he  means  that 
we  cannot  get  them  apart.  Certainly  this 
is  far  from  proving  that  they  cannot  be  apart 
and  correspond,  and  that  the  "  doctrine  of 
their  correspondence  has  in  the  end  no 
meaning'''  Its  meaning  is  perfectly  obvi- 
ous —  at  least  to  every  one  whose  eyes  are 
not  afflicted  with  pragmatic  cataracts.  But, 
to  make  it  concrete,  let  us  again  take  an  ex- 


THE   AMBIGUITY  OF   "TRUTH"  73 

ample.  I  am  thinking,  let  us  say,  that  my 
friend  B  is  in  Constantinople.  Let  us  say, 
too,  that  though  I  am  and  remain  without 
any  experience  of  Constantinople,  my  friend 
B  actually  is  there.  Surely  thought  and 
reality  are  here  "  apart  "  —  though  it  remains 
a  fact  that  they  cannot  "  be  got  apart,"  i.e. 
by  any  individual  human  experience.  Dr. 
Schiller's  argument  would  therefore  seem  to 
prove  nothing  more  than  that  if  truth  con- 
sists in  correspondence,  it  must  transcend  the 
individual  human  mind  —  it  must  be  a  rela- 
tion such  that  only  one  of  its  terms  is  in 
the  individual's  experience ;  which  is  exactly 
what  the  upholders  of  the  theory  in  question 
have  always  maintained. 

Dr.  Schiller  has,  however,  another  objec- 
tion to  the  doctrine  of  correspondence,  — 
namely,  that  if  truth  consists  in  this  relation 
we  can  never  know  whether  in  any  given 
case  the  correspondence  holds  or  not ;  we 
shall  never  be  able  to  tell  whether  a  given 
thought  is  true. 

In  answer  to  this  an  upholder  of  the  old 


74  WHAT  IS   PRAGMATISM? 

theory  might  well  respond  :  "  What  of  it  ? 
Suppose  this  so ;  would  that  make  the  na- 
ture and  meaning  of  truth  as  defined  incon- 
sistent or  impossible  ?  "  And  here  we  come 
upon  a  point  of  considerable  importance  — 
the  question,  namely,  whether  my  thought 
can  be  true  if  I  do  not  know  it  to  be  true. 
On  this  the  pragmatists  seem  to  be  divided. 
Sometimes  they  admit  that  such  a  thought 
would  be  true,^  sometimes  they  avoid  the 
issue,^  and  sometimes  they  flatly  deny  the 
possibility.^  This  latter  position  seems  to 
rest  upon  a  failure  to  distinguish  between  "  a 
truth,"  and  the  truth  relation,  the  quality 
of  trueness  or  of  being  true.  Granted  that 
a  "  claim "  must  be  verified  to  become  "  a 
truth,"  does  it  follow  that  there  are  no  such 
things  as  true  though  unverified  claims  ? 
Surely  the  pragmatist  would  hesitate  to  call 
all  such  claims  false.  And  it  is  rather  hard 
to  see  how  they  could  be  neither  true  nor 
false,  though  simple  enough  to  understand 
that  (according  to  the  useful  though  arbitrary 
^  E.g.  James.     ^  E.g.  Schiller.     ^  £g^  Dewey  and  Schiller. 


THE   AMBIGUITY  OF   "TRUTH"  75 

definition)  they  are  as  yet  neither  "  truths  " 
nor  falsehoods.  It  is  therefore  one  thing  to 
have  a  true  idea  or  make  a  vaHd  claim,  and 
quite  another  to  know  that  the  idea  is  true 
or  the  claim  valid.  Hence  Dr.  Schiller's  as- 
sertion that  we  cannot  find  out  whether  our 
thought  is  true  is  utterly  irrelevant  to  the 
question  what  we  mean  by  its  being  true. 
The  test  of  truth  is  one  thing ;  the  nature 
or  meaning  of  truth  quite  another. 

But  it  is  not  the  case  that  on  the  corre- 
spondence theory  we  cannot  tell  whether  a 
thought  is  true.  To  be  sure,  the  shadow  of 
a  very  theoretical  doubt  may  always  be  left 
us  in  all  matters  outside  of  our  immediate 
here  and  now.  The  proofs  that  my  friend  B 
is  in  Constantinople  may  be  false,  I  may  be 
dreaming,  this  may  be  a  solipsistic  world, 
etc.  But  such  a  doubt  is  so  exceedingly  theo- 
retical that  it  ought  to  have  no  terrors  for 
any  man  —  least  of  all  for  a  pragmatist.  If, 
however,  his  pragmatic  conscience  is  still  un- 
accountably troubled  by  so  purely  theoretic 
and  academic  a  question,  let  him  tell  us  how 


76  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

his  theory  of  truth  avoids  the  difficulty. 
And  to  show  that  it  is  here  no  better  off 
than  the  much-reviled  correspondence  theory, 
I  need  surely  do  no  more  than  summon  Pro- 
fessor James  as  my  witness.  For  in  dealing 
with  this  very  question  he  writes,  "  If  there  is 
to  be  truth,  both  realities  and  beliefs  about 
them  must  conspire  to  make  it ;  but  whether 
there  ever  is  such  a  thing,  or  how  any  one 
can  be  sure  that  his  own  beliefs  possess  it, 
pragmatism  never  pretends  to  determine."^ 
—  The  fact  is,  as  a  practical  matter,  much  the 
same  tests  of  truth  hold,  no  matter  what  your 
theory.  If  you  grant  that  it  is  at  all  possible 
for  me  to  prove  that  Boston  is  in  Massachu- 
setts, that  Caesar  lived  before  Napoleon, 
that  my  friend  B  is  in  Constantinople, 
then  on  the  correspondence  theory  as  well 
as  on  any  other  I  can  know  that  my  thought 
is  true. 

This  being  the  case,  it  is  really  hard    to 
see  why  pragmatism  has    rejected    it.     The 

1  "  The  Pragmatist  Account  of  Truth,"  Phil.  Rev.,  Vol. 
XVII,  p.  8. 


THE   AMBIGUITY  OF   ''TRUTH"  'J'] 

correspondence  view  of  truth  is  perfectly  con- 
sistent with  the  humanistic  attitude  toward 
truth  and  the  making  of  truth.  It  not  only 
admits  but  insists  that  our  human  thought 
is  indispensable  to  the  truth  relation,  and  that 
without  it  such  a  relation  could  not  exist.  It 
is  essentially  realistic  (which  ought  to  please 
pragmatism,  for  pragmatism  at  least  pretends 
to  be  realistic),  and  it  combines  more  natu- 
rally and  easily  with  empiricism  than  with 
rationalism.  And  it  is  glad  to  admit  that 
the  way  our  ideas  "  work  "  in  the  broad  sense 
is  one  of  the  most  important  tests  of  their 
being  true.  In  spite  of  all  this,  however, 
the  leading  pragmatists,  one  and  all,  refuse 
to  accept  the  theory,  considering  it  either 
quite  inadequate  or  flatly  meaningless  and 
false. 

This  is  a  fact  which  I  wish  especially  to 
emphasize.  One  frequently  gets  the  impres- 
sion from  the  writings  of  the  pragmatists 
that  all  they  have  done  is  innocently  to  call 
attention  to  an  obvious  characteristic  of  the 
truth  relation,  which  their  opponents  have 


7^  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

thereupon  unaccountably  and  wickedly  de- 
nied, and  that  the  latter  are,  therefore,  at 
all  points  the  aggressors.  As  a  fact,  the 
exact  opposite  of  this  is  the  case.  No  one, 
so  far  as  I  know,  denies  the  usefulness  of 
truth  nor  the  value  of  successful  working  as 
verification  of  the  true  idea.  And  if  the 
pragmatists  had  been  satisfied  with  pointing 
this  out  and  with  their  further  (rather  con- 
fusing and  unwarranted)  endeavor  to  identify 
the  word  "  truth  "  with  "  successful  working," 
and  had  stopped  there,  no  one  would  have 
thought  it  worth  while  to  dispute  with  them 
over  a  matter  which  would  obviously  have 
been  one  of  terminology  only.  But  they 
have  not  stopped  there;  and  the  question  at 
issue  is  really  one  of  fundamental  importance 
to  clear  thinking  for  the  reason  that  the 
pragmatists  have  not  only  appropriated  the 
word  truth  to  their  own  meaning,  but  also 
insist  that  the  meaning  which  most  other 
philosophers  have  given  to  the  word  is  no 
meaning  at  all.  It  is  they,  therefore,  rather 
than  the  non-pragmatists,  who  are  the  real 


THE   AMBIGUITY   OF   "TRUTH"  79 

aggressors  and  who  refuse,  rather  intoler- 
antly, to  recognize  the  existence  of  any  other 
relation  or  characteristic  of  a  true  idea  besides 
that  which  they  themselves  designate  by  the 
word  truth.  In  one  of  his  latest  contribu- 
tions to  the  subject,  Professor  James  says  of 
the  correspondence  theory:  "Surely  this  is 
not  a  counter-theory  of  truth  to  ours.  It  is 
the  renunciation  of  all  articulate  theory.  It 
is  but  a  claim  to  the  right  to  call  certain 
ideas  true  anyhow;  and  this  is  what  I  meant 
by  saying  that  the  anti-pragmatists  offer  us 
no  real  alternative,  and  that  our  account  is 
literally  the  only  positive  theory  extant."  ^ 
Unconditional  surrender,  in  other  words,  is 
the  only  terms  pragmatism  will  offer  its 
opponents ;  and  the  non-pragmatist,  no  mat- 
ter how  peaceable  his  disposition,  is  thus 
forced  to  take  up  arms  in  very  self-defense. 
This  categorical  denial  by  the  pragmatists 
that  there  is  any  meaning  in  the  correspond- 
ence theory  must  be  kept  constantly  in  mind 

^  Review  of  Hebert's  "  Le  Pragmatisme,"  Jour,  of  Phil., 
Vol.  V,  p.  692. 


8o  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

in  our  attempt  to  understand  the  theory  (or 
theories?)  of  the  truth  relation  which  they 
propose  in  its  place.  This,  however,  is  a 
large  question,  and  we  must  postpone  con- 
sideration of  it  to  the  next  lecture. 


LECTURE   III 

THE  PRAGMATIC  VIEW  OF  THE  TRUTH 
RELATION 


LECTURE   III 

THE  PRAGMATIC   VIEW  OF  THE  TRUTH 
RELATION 

No  one  can  fully  grasp  the  pragmatic 
meaning  of  the  truth  relation  without  first 
understanding  the  pragmatic  view  of  the 
nature  of  "  a  truth  "  or  verified  human  claim 
discussed  in  the  last  lecture.  And  the 
reason  is,  as  I  shall  try  to  show,  that 
the  former  grows  out  of  the  latter  and  is  the 
result  of  a  complete  confusion  between  the 
two  uses  of  the  word  truth.  It  is  impossible 
to  read  half  a  dozen  pages  of  pragmatist 
writing  on  this  subject  without  coming  upon 
at  least  one,  and  usually  many,  instances  of 
utter  failure  to  distinguish  between  "  truth  " 
as  known  fact,  or  mental  possession,  and 
"truth"  as  trueness  or  that  quality  or  rela- 
tion characterizing  a  true  idea  which  makes 
it  true.     I  trust  that   by  this  time   you   all 

83 


84  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

are  clear  on  this  distinction  and  appreciate 
its  importance.  For  it  is  from  a  failure  to 
make  this  distinction  that  pragmatism  has 
fallen  into  the  pitiful  and  unnecessary  diffi- 
culties, inconsistencies,  and  impossible  situa- 
tions, which  I  shall  try  to  point  out. 

There  are  several  roads  by  which  pragma- 
tism seems  to  have  moved  from  its  position 
on  the  nature  of  "  a  truth  "  to  the  meaning 
it  has  given  to  the  truth  relation.  Of  these 
I  shall  point  out  two.  (i)  We  have  noted 
the  emphasis  placed  by  pragmatists  upon 
the  concrete,  psychological  nature  of  our 
human  truths.  These  do  not,  they  insist, 
dwell  apart  in  a  Platonic  realm  ;  they  are  all 
of  them  concrete  mental  facts,  they  are  of 
such  stuff  as  dreams  and  feelings  and  sensa- 
tions are  made  of.  To  banish  the  abstract 
from  philosophy  so  far  as  possible  and  to  sub- 
stitute for  it  the  individual  concrete  in  the 
interests  of  clear  thinking  has  been  one  of 
the  great  and  excellent  aims  of  pragmatism. 
What  more  natural,  therefore,  than  to  use 
the  same  concrete  method  in  dealing  with 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW   OF  TRUTH      85 

the  further  question  of  the  trueness  of  ideas  ? 
If  truth  in  this  sense  be  a  relation,  it  must, 
insists  the  pragmatist,  be  a  concrete  relation. 
In  fact,  long  before  pragmatism  was  heard  of 
Professor  James  sought  in  his  "  Principles  of 
Psychology  "  to  interpret  every  relation  con- 
cretely so  far  as  possible/  This  principle 
applied  to  the  truth  relation  makes  it  no 
mere  correspondence  as  defined  above,  but 
rather  the  chain  or  succession  of  things  or 
events  or  experiences  that  are  to  be  found 
either  between  an  idea  and  its  object  or 
between  a  judgment  and  its  vindication. 
Not  only,  therefore,  is  "  a  truth  "  concrete ; 
pragmatism  insists  that  its  trueness  also  shall 
be  a  concrete  thing  or  group  of  things.  It  is 
this  chain  of  intermediating  things  or  experi- 
ences that  not  only  proves  it  true  but  also 
makes  it  true,  and  constitutes  its  truth.  The 
truth  relation  is  therefore  not  "  saltatory  "  but 
"ambulatory  " '^ —  it  consists  not  in  the  mere 
fact  that  our  object  is  there  as  we  think  it,  but 

^  See  especially  Vol.  I,  pp.  243  ff. ;  Vol.  II,  pp.  148  ff. 
3  «  A  Word  more  about  Truth,"  Jour,  of  Phil.,  Vol.  IV, 
pp.  396  f. 


86  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

in  the  actual  experiential  process  of  getting  at 
it  or  as  near  it  as  may  be.  "  The  links  of  ex- 
perience sequent  upon  an  idea,  which  mediate 
between  it  and  reality,  form  and,  for  the  prag- 
matist,  indeed,  are  the  co7tcrete  relation  of 
truth  that  may  obtain  between  the  idea  and 
that  reality.  They,  he  says,  are  all  that  we 
mean  when  we  speak  of  the  idea  '  pointing ' 
to  the  reality,  '  fitting  '  it,  '  corresponding ' 
with  it  or  '  agreeing  '  with  it,  —  they  and 
other  similar  mediating  trains  of  verifica- 
tion. Such  mediating  events  make  the  idea 
'  true.'  The  idea  itself,  if  it  exists  at  all,  is 
also  a  concrete  event ;  so  that  pragmatism 
insists  that  truth  in  the  singular  is  only  a 
collective  name  for  truths  in  the  plural, 
these  consisting  always  of  series  of  definite 
events."  ^  I  shall  not  at  this  point  offer  any 
criticism  of  this  view  that  true^iess  is  a  collec- 
tive name  for  concrete  psychic  truths,  being 
concerned  here  merely  in  pointing  out  this 
first  mode  of  transition  from  the  latter  to  the 
former. 

1  "  The  Pragmatist  Account  of  Truth,"   Phil.  Rev.,  VoL 
XVII,  p.  II. 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW  OF  TRUTH      B>y 

(2)  Another  road  which  has  led  the  prag- 
matist  to  the  same  result  starts  from  the 
view  already  dealt  with  that  our  "  truths " 
are  made,  that  they  begin  as  claims  and  are 
verified  within  our  experience,  and  that  the 
test  of  their  verity  is  their  working,  their 
consequences,  their  application.  Now  the 
pragmatist  contention  that  a  claim  must  be 
verified  in  order  to  become  "  a  truth "  is 
neither  novel  nor  open  to  any  serious  criti- 
cism ;  but  the  pragmatist  takes  it  for  granted 
that  once  this  is  admitted  it  follows  that  the 
claim  is  made  true  by  being  verified  and  that 
its  trueness  consists  in  its  verification. 
Verification  thereby  ceases  to  be  the  pro- 
cess of  provmg  an  idea  to  be  true  and 
becomes  the  process  of  making  it  true. 
"  Truths  are  logical  values,"  says  Dr.  Schil- 
ler ;  and  he  adds,  "  It  directly  follows  from 
this  definition  of  truth  that  all  '  truths ' 
must  be  verified  to  be  properly  true.  .  .  . 
To  become  really  true  it  has  to  be  tested, 
and  it  is  tested  by  being  applied.  .  .  .  The 
truth  of  an  assertion  depends  upon  its  appli- 


88  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

cation.  ...  In  short,  truths  must  be  used  to 
become  true,  and  (in  the  end)  to  stay  true."  ^ 
Just  how  "  it  directly  follows "  "  that  all 
truths  must  be  verified  to  be  properly  true  " 
may  not  seem  so  obvious  to  us  as  it  does  to 
Dr.  Schiller ;  for  the  premise  to  such  a  con- 
clusion must  evidently  be  that  no  belief  can 
be  true  unless  it  is  known  to  be  true,  and 
the  logical  consequence  is,  of  course,  that 
there  are  no  such  things  as  true  but  unveri- 
fied beliefs,  and  that  before  a  belief  is  veri- 
fied it  is  either  false  or  else  neither  true  nor 
false. 

Let  me  sum  up  this  rather  difficult  point 
in  a  few  words.  We  all  agree  that  verifica- 
tion is  essential  to  the  making  of  a  claim  in- 
to a  truth ;  but  the  pragmatist  draws  from 
this  the  conclusion  that  the  truth  itrueness) 
of  the  claim  depends  on  and  consists  in  its 
verification.  This,  I  maintain,  is  a  flagrant 
case  of  using  the  word  truth  in  two  per- 
fectly distinct  senses  as  if  it  meant  the  same 
thing  both  times  and  as  if   it  had  but  one 

1  "  Studies  in  Humanism,"  pp.  7-9. 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW   OF  TRUTH      89 

meaning.  It  is  a  confusion  between  a 
"  truth  "  and  "  trueness,"  —  a  fallacy  from 
which  flow,  as  will  be  seen,  the  most  serious 
consequences. 

Or,  to  put  the  same  thing  in  another 
light,  the  claim  being  proved  true  by  its 
working,  by  its  consequences,  it  is  said  to  be 
made  true  (notice,  not  made  "  a  truth  "  but 
made  trtie)  by  these  consequences.  Its  true- 
ness thus  consists  in  these  consequences. 
"  The  truth  (validity)  of  a  truth  (claim), " 
says  Schiller,  "is  tested  and  established  by 
the  value  of  its  consequences."^  This  sen- 
tence is  perfectly  harmless,  but  the  pragma- 
tist  does  not  stop  here.  From  it  he  deduces 
the  rather  amazing  conclusion  that  since  its 
usefulness  proves  it  true,  its  trueness  con- 
sists in  its  being  useful.  The  test  of  truth 
and  the  meaning  of  truth  are  thus  com- 
pletely identified. 

So  much  for  pragmatism's  roads  of  ap- 
proach to  its  final  view  of  the  truth  relation. 
And  now,  lest  I  should  unwittingly  misrep- 
* "  Studies  in  Humanism,"  p.  160. 


9b  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

resent  that  view,  let   the   three   great  prag- 
matists  speak  for  it :  — 

Professor  James :  "  Theoretical  truth  is 
no  relation  between  our  mind  and  the  arche- 
typal reality.  It  falls  within  the  mind,  be- 
ing the  accord  of  some  of  its  processes  and 
objects  with  other  processes  and  objects."^ 
"  Truth  happens  to  an  idea.  It  becomes 
true,  is  made  true  by  events.  Its  verity  is 
in  fact  an  event,  a  process;  the  process, 
namely,  of  its  verifying  itself,  its  wen-Jicalion. 
Its  validity  is  the  process  of  its  w^Wd-ation."^ 
"  The  truth  of  our  beliefs  consists  in  general 
in  their  giving  satisfaction."^  "The  links 
of  experience  sequent  upon  an  idea,  which 
mediate  between  it  and  a  reality,  form,  and 
for  the  pragmatist,  indeed,  are  the  concrete  re- 
lation of  truth.  .  .  .  Such  mediating  events 
make  the  idea  true."^  "The  truth  relation 
is  a  definitely  experienceable  relation.  .  .  . 
The  relation  to  its  object  that  makes  an  idea 

*  "  Humanism  and  Truth  once  More,"  Mind,  Vol.  XIV, 
p.  198.  ^  "Pragmatism,"  p.  201. 

8  "The  Pragmatist  Account  of  Truth,"  Phil.  Rev.^  Vol. 
XVII,  p.  5.  * /did.,  p.  II. 


THE   PRAGMATIC  VIEW  OF  TRUTH      9 1 

true  in  any  given  instance  is,  we  say,  em- 
bodied in  intermediate  details  of  reality 
which  lead  towards  the  object,  which  vary 
in  every  instance,  and  which  in  every  in- 
stance can  be  concretely  traced.  The  chain 
of  workings  which  an  idea  sets  up  is  the  opin- 
ion's truth,  falsity,  or  irrelevancy,  as  the  case 
may  be.  .  .  .  These  'workings'  differ  in 
every  single  instance,  they  never  transcend 
experience,  they  consist  of  particulars,  men- 
tal or  sensible,  and  they  admit  of  con- 
crete description  in  every  individual  case. 
Pragmatists  are  unable  to  see  what  you  can 
possibly  mea7i  by  calling  an  idea  true,  unless 
you  mean  that  between  it  as  a  terminus  a 
quo  in  some  one's  mind  and  some  particular 
reality  as  a  terminus  ad  quem,  such  concrete 
workings  do  or  may  intervene.  Their  direc- 
tion constitutes  the  idea's  reference  to  that 
reality,  their  satisfactoriness  constitutes  its 
adaptation  thereto,  and  the  two  things  to- 
gether constitute  the  '  truth '  of  the  idea  for 
its  possessor. "  ^ 

1  Hubert's   "  Le  Pragmatisme,"  Jour,   of  Phil.^  Vol.  V, 
pp.  691-692. 


92  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

Dr.  Schiller :  Truth  is  "  a  function  of  our 
intellectual  activity  or  a  manipulation  of  our 
objects  which  turns  out  to  be  useful."^ 
While  some  truths  may  be  conceived  as  cor- 
respondences or  agreements,  this  is  only 
on  condition  "  that  these  processes  remain 
strictly  immanent  in  human  knowing." 
They  are  "  valuable  and  serviceable  cross- 
references  which  obtain  withi7t  our  expe- 
rience." ^  "  All  truths  must  be  verified  to  be 
properly  true."  ^  "  If  truth  could  win  no 
recognition,  it  would  so  far  not  work,  and 
so  fail  to  be  true."  ^ 

Professor  Dewey :  "  Truth  is  an  expe- 
rienced^ relation  of  characteristic  quality  of 
things,  and  it  has  no  meaning  outside  of 
such  [experienced]  relation."  ®  "  From  this 
[the  pragmatic]  point  of  view  verification 
and  truth  are  two  names  for  the  same  thing." 

^  "  Humanism,"  p.  6i. 

2  « Mr.  Bradley's  Theory  of  Truth,"  Mind,  Vol.  XVI, 
p.  404.  ^  "  Studies  in  Humanism,"  p.  8. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  70.  *  Italics  mine. 

«  "The  Experimental  Theory  of  Knowledge,"  Mind^  Vol. 
XV,  p.  305. 


THE   PRAGMATIC  VIEW   OF  TRUTH      93 

As  an  illustration,  Professor  Dewey  cites  an 
idea  that  a  certain  noise  comes  from  a  street 
car;  this  idea  being  investigated  and  verified 
becomes  true.  Had  it  not  been  verified  it 
never  would  have  been  true,  —  even  if  as  a 
fact  the  noise  had  really  come  from  the  car. 
To  say  that  the  idea  was  true  before  it  was 
verified  is,  he  insists,  either  tautologous  ("  be- 
ing just  a  restatement  of  the  fact  that  the 
idea  has,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  worked  success- 
fully "),  or  else,  in  any  other  sense,  it  is  sim- 
ply false.  Exactly  speaking,  the  idea  is  not 
true  till  it  works  out,  for  its  working  and  its 
truth  are  identical.  "  What  the  experimen- 
talist means  is  that  the  effective  working  of 
the  idea  and  its  truth  are  one  and  the  same 
thing  —  this  working  being  neither  the  cause 
nor  the  evidence  of  truth  but  its  nature."  ^ 

To  give  a  fair  presentation  of  the  prag- 
matist  view  of  truth,  however,  I  must  add 
that  throughout  the  writings  of  Professor 
James  —  and    more    especially    in    what   he 

^  "  Reality  and  the  Criterion  of  Truth  for  Ideas,"  Mind, 
Vol.  XVI,  pp.  335-337- 


94  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

has  published  since  the  appearance  of  his 
"  Pragmatism  "  —  there  runs,  parallel  with 
the  view  expressed  above,  a  different  and 
decidedly  less  radical  description  of  the  na- 
ture of  the  truth  relation.^  Thus  verifiability 
is  often  spoken  of  as  being  as  good  as  veri- 
fication. And  in  the  Journal  of  PJiilosophy 
for  August  15,  1907,  he  writes,  "Truth  is 
essentially  a  relation  between  two  things,  an 
idea,  on  the  one  hand,  and  a  reality  outside 
of  the  idea,  on  the  other.  This  relation,  like 
all  relations,  has  its  fundamentum^  namely 
the  matrix  of  experiential  circumstance,  psy- 
chological as  well  as  physical,  in  which  the 
correlated  terms  are  found  embedded.  .  .  . 
What  constitutes  the  relation  known  as  truth, 
I  now  say,  is  just  the  existence  in  tJie  empiri- 
cal world  of  this  fundamentum  of  circum- 
stance surrounding  object  and  idea  and  ready 

^  I  should  add,  however,  that  in  his  latest  treatment  of  the 
subject,  namely  in  his  review  of  Hubert's  recent  book  on 
Pragmatism,  Professor  James  seems  to  have  returned  part 
way  to  the  more  radical  view,  while  still  maintaining  the 
reality  and  independence  of  the  object.  See  the  Jour,  of 
Phil,  for  December  3,  1908. 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW  OF  TRUTH     95 

to  be  either  short-circuited  or  traversed  at 
full  length.  So  long  as  it  exists  and  a  satis- 
factory passage  through  it  between  the  object 
and  the  idea  is  possible,  that  idea  will  both 
be  true,  and  will  have  been  true  of  that 
object,  whether  fully  developed  verification 
has  taken  place  or  not.  The  nature  and 
place  and  affinities  of  the  object,  of  course, 
play  as  vital  a  part  in  making  the  particular 
passage  possible  as  do  the  nature  and  associ- 
ative tendencies  of  the  idea;  so  that  the 
notion  that  truth  could  fall  altogether  inside 
of  the  thinker's  experience  and  be  something 
purely  psychological  is  absurd."  And  in  a 
more  recent  article,^  while  still  maintaining 
that  the  truth  relation  must  be  a  chain  of 
"  concrete  "  links,  he  comes  still  closer  to  the 
correspondence  theory.  "  The  pragmatizing 
epistemologist  posits  a  reality  and  a  mind 
with  ideas.  What  now,  he  asks,  can  make 
those  ideas  true  of  that  reality?  Ordinary 
epistemology  contents  itself  with  the  vague 

1  "  The  Pragmatist  Account  of  Truth,"  Phil.  Rev.,  Vol- 
XVII,  pp.  1-17. 


96  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

statement  that  the  ideas  must  'correspond' 
or  '  agree  ' ;  the  pragmatist  insists  upon  being 
more  concrete  and  asks  what  such  agreement 
may  mean  in  detail.  He  finds  first  that  the 
ideas  must  point  to  or  lead  towards  that 
reality  and  no  other,  and  then  that  the  point- 
ings and  leadings  must  yield  satisfaction  as 
their  result."  "  The  pragmatist  calls  satisfac- 
tions indispensable  for  truth-building,  but  ex- 
pressly calls  them  insufficient  unless  reality 
be  also  incidentally  led  to.  If  the  reality  he 
assumed  were  canceled  from  his  universe  of 
discourse,  he  would  straightway  give  the 
name  of  falsehoods  to  the  beliefs  remaining 
in  spite  of  all  their  satisfactoriness.  For  him, 
as  for  his  critic,  there  can  be  no  truth  if  there 
is  nothing  to  be  true  about.  Ideas  are  so 
much  flat  psychological  surface  unless  some 
mirrored  matter  gives  them  cognitive  luster." 
"  Ideas  are  practically  useful  which  we  can 
verify  by  the  sum  total  of  all  their  leadings, 
and  the  reality  of  whose  objects  may  thus  be 
considered  established  beyond  doubt.  That 
these  ideas  should  be  true  in  advance  of  and 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW   OF   TRUTH      97 

apart  from  their  utility,  that,  in  other  words, 
their  objects  should  be  really  there,  is  the 
very  condition  of  their  having  that  kind  of 
utility."  And  even  in  his  "Pragmatism" 
Professor  James  in  one  place  writes,  "When 
new  experiences  lead  to  retrospective  judg- 
ments, using  the  past  tense,  what  these  judg- 
ments utter  was  true,  even  though  no  past 
thinker  had  been  led  there."  ^ 

How  far  Dr.  Schiller  goes  with  Professor 
James  in  his  modified  view  of  truth,  I  am 
unable  to  say.  Professor  James  insists  that 
he  and  Schiller  agree  absolutely  on  the  sub- 
ject.^ Yet  it  is  certainly  very  difficult  to  find 
in  any  of  Dr.  Schiller's  writings  anything 
comparable  in  explicitness  to  the  expressions 
just  quoted  from  Professor  James.  And  Pro- 
fessor Dewey  certainly  stands  firmly  on  the 
expressions  quoted  from  him  and  remains 
always  consistently  radical. 

After  listening  to  the  quotations  I  have 
just  read  you  from  the  three  leading  prag- 

1  p.  223. 

"^  See  his  review  of  Hubert's  "  Le  Pragmatisme,"  in  the 
Jour,  of  Phil.,  Vol.  V,  pp.  693-694. 


98  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

matists,  you  may  understand  why  the  critics 
of  pragmatism  have  been  so  constantly  — 
and  justly!  —  accused  of  misunderstanding 
it. 

And  I  am  free  to  confess  that  it  is  beyond 
my  power  to  formulate,  on  the  basis  of  what 
the  pragmatists  have  written,  a  single  con- 
sistent and  harmonious  pragmatic  doctrine 
concerning  the  nature  of  the  truth  relation. 
The  best  I  can  do  for  pragmatism  is  to  make 
two  doctrines  of  truth  out  of  the  expressions 
quoted  above ;  and,  indeed,  it  must  be  evident 
to  you  all  that  we  have  here  two  quite  dis- 
tinct views  —  one  radical  and  one  somewhat 
modified  —  as  to  the  meaning  of  truth.  The 
former  of  these  holds  that  truth  is  the  pro- 
cess of  verification  which  goes  on  within 
experience ;  that  it  consists  in  the  successful 
working  of  the  idea,  in  the  concrete  steps 
within  consciousness  that  lead  from  the 
unverified  claim  to  the  full  and  satisfying 
assurance  of  its  "  goodness."  The  modified 
view,  on  the  other  hand,  maintains  that  there 
are   two  factors  which   go  to  make   up  the 


THE   PRAGMATIC  VIEW  OF  TRUTH      99 

trueness  of  an  idea:  namely,  (i)  the  concrete 
steps  of  its  leading  and  the  subjective  satis- 
factions resulting  (as  described  by  the  radical 
view) ;  and  also  (2)  the  actual  presence  in 
reahty  of  the  object  which  the  idea  means. 
Let  us  note  a  little  more  in  detail  three  of 
the  most  important  differences  between  these 
two  views. 

(i)  The  most  obvious  difference  is  the 
recognition  found  in  the  more  moderate  view 
that  it  is  indispensable  for  the  trueness  of  an 
idea  that  its  object  should  really  "  be  there."  ^ 
Truth  thus  ceases  to  be  "  wholly  within  our 
experience,"  or  "an  experienced  relation," 
and  becomes  instead  a  relation  which  com- 
pletely transcends  (or  may  transcend)  any 
single  finite  experience.  It  is  not  merely 
a  "  process  "  nor  a  felt  "  leading  "  from  one 
part  of  our  experience  to  another.  It  is  no 
more  psychical  than  physical  in  its  nature. 
It  is  a  relation  between  an  idea  and  a  reality 

1  Numerous  expressions  of  the  moderate  pragmatist  show 
that  by  the  object's  being  really  "there"  he  means  not  only 
that  the  object  exists  but  that  it  exists  independently  of  the 
individual's  experience,  and  (at  times)  outside  of  it. 


lOO  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

which  may  be  "  beyond  the  direct  experience 
of  the  particular  cognizer,"  ^  a  relation  which, 
apparently,  no  one  short  of  a  Roycean  Ab- 
solute need  ever  experience.  It  must  be 
evident  to  all  how  completely  this  differs 
from  the  radical  view  which  takes  no  note 
of  any  reality  outside  the  individual's  expe- 
rience as  essential  to  truth,  and  which 
makes  truth  wholly  a  process  within  expe- 
rience. And  this  brings  us  to  the  second 
difference  between  the  two  theories. 

(2)  Since  the  modified  view  of  truth  rec- 
ognizes an  outer  reality  as  relevant  and  es- 
sential, it  can  and  does  maintain  that  an  idea 
may  be  true  before  it  is  verified,  whereas  the 
radical  view  insists  that  truth  consists  in  the 
actual  process  of  verification,  and  that,  hence, 
the  idea  is  not  true  till  so  proved.  Thus  we 
have  here  another  case  of  flat  contradiction, 
Professor  Dewey  saying  that  the  idea  is  not 
true  before  verified,  and  Professor  James  say- 
ing that  it  is.     A  less  obvious  but  equally 

^  Professor  James  in  the  Jour,  of  Phil.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  403, 
note. 


THE   PRAGMATIC    VIEW  OF  TRUTH    lOI 

important  phase  of  this  same  disagreement 
is  the  question  of  verifiabihty.  Professor 
Dewey  and  the  left  wing  maintain,  as  has 
been  seen,  that  actual  verification  is  essential 
to  truth  ;  Professor  James  and  the  right  wing 
maintain  that  verifiabihty  is  quite  sufficient; 
while  the  center,  under  both  Dr.  Schiller  and 
Professor  James,  insists  that  after  all  there 
isn't  any  real  difference  between  the  meanings 
of  these  two  words.  Whether  there  is  such  a 
difference  or  not,  I  must  leave  to  your  judg- 
ment. For  my  own  part,  I  had  always  sup- 
posed there  was  the  same  difference  as  that 
between  mere  possibility  and  the  concrete 
process  of  making  the  possibility  an  actuality; 
and  I  had  also  thought  that  this  was  a  real 
difference.  Columbus's  idea  that  he  could 
cross  the  Atlantic  was  merely  verifiable  so 
long  as  he  stayed  in  Spain,  and  this  its  quality 
of  verifiabihty  (which  it  already  possessed 
while  he  was  still  in  Spain),  had  always  seemed 
to  me  quite  a  different  thing  from  the  concrete 
steps  of  getting  ships,  manning  them,  hoist- 
ing anchor  and  raising  sail  and  all  the  other 


I02  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

links  in  the  chain  of  actual  verification. 
And  it  must,  I  think,  be  evident  to  all  who 
are  not  pragmatists  that  it  is  one  thing  to  say 
the  full  process  of  verification  is  essential  to 
truth  and  a  very  different  thing  to  say  that 
verifiability  alone  is  essential.  For  verifia- 
bility  is  not  a  process  nor  a  succession  of 
events  in  time,  it  is  not  included  within  any 
one's  experience,  but  is  a  general  condition 
or  set  of  conditions  which  transcends  every 
single  finite  experience.  It  is  not  a  felt 
"leading,"  it  is  not  a  "form of  the  good,"  nor 
a  "satisfactory  working,"  nor  any  other  ex- 
perience or  experience-process.  It  is,  if  you 
like,  the  possibility  of  these,  but  it  is  not 
these.  It  is  a  totality  of  relations  which  are 
not,  and  will  never  be,  within  any  finite  ex- 
perience. It  is  a  present  condition  of  the 
idea,  not  something  that  "  happens  to "  it. 
It  is  not  "  made  " ;  it  is  already  there.  It  is 
immeasurably  more  harmonious  with  the 
correspondence  theory  of  truth  than  with 
that  of  radical  pragmatism.  The  harmony 
which    Dr.  Schiller  has   brought   about  be- 


J 


THE  PRAGMATIC   VIEW   OF  TRUTH    103 

tween  verification  and  verifiability  is  of  the 
same  sort  that  usually  obtains  between  the 
lion  and  the  lamb  when  they  lie  down  to- 
gether. "  It  is,"  he  tells  us,  "  impossible  to 
separate  verifiability  from  verification  —  the 
potentiality  does  not  exist  apart  from  the  ac- 
tuality from  which  it  is  an  ex  post  facto  in- 
ference. A  claim  to  truth,  therefore,  can 
only  be  regarded  as  verifiable  on  the  strength 
of  past  experiences  of  verifications,  and  a 
'  verifiable  '  truth  which  is  never  verified  is 
really  unverifiable."  ^  It  would  seem,  thus, 
that  the  reason  why  verification  and  verifia- 
bility cannot  be  separated  is  the  same  that 
makes  it  impossible  to  separate  the  lion  and 
the  lamb  after  they  have  lain  down  together. 
It  is,  therefore,  obvious  why  Dr.  Schiller  in- 
sists that  there  is  no  difference  between  the 
two;  to  his  pragmatic  mind  there  really  is 

1  "Ultima  Ratio?"  Jour,  of  Phil.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  493,  note. 
The  non-pragmatist,  of  course,  agrees  with  Schiller  that  a  po- 
tentiality cannot  exist  apart  from  an  actuality,  but  he  insists 
that  the  actuality  which  makes  an  idea  verifiable  is  not  actual 
verification,  but  the  existing  condition  of  relevant  reality,  the 
nature  of  the  fact  in  question  and  the  idea's  conformity  to 
that  fact. 


I04  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM  ? 

no  such  thing  as  verifiability,  it  having  been 
completely  swallowed  by  verification.  All 
of  which  is  new  evidence  of  the  great  differ- 
ence between  the  view  that  considers  mere 
verifiability  without  verification  sufficient  for 
truth  and  that  which  insists  that  actual  veri- 
fication is  essential. 

(3)  The  third  difference  between  the  left 
and  right  wings  of  pragmatism  is  hardly 
more  than  a  variant  on  the  second,  and  yet 
deserves  especial  notice.  It  is,  namely,  con- 
cerned with  the  question  of  the  "  successful 
working,"  or  the  "  consequences,"  of  an  idea. 
Radical  pragmatism  maintains  that  these  not 
only  prove  the  idea  true,  but  make  it  true  and 
constitute  its  truth.  Modified  pragmatism 
denies  the  latter  statement.  Professor  Dewey 
says,  "  The  effective  working  of  the  idea 
and  its  truth  are  one  and  the  same  thing 
—  this  working  being  neither  the  cause  nor 
the  evidence  of  truth  but  its  nature."  Pro- 
fessor James  says,  "  That  these  ideas  {i£. 
useful  ideas)  should  be  true  in  advance  of 
and  apart  from  their  utility,  that,  in  other 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW  OF  TRUTH    105 

words,  their  objects  should  be  really  there, 
is  the  very  condition  of  their  having  that 
kind  of  utility."  In  other  words,  to  put  it 
briefly,  the  left  wing  of  pragmatism  main- 
tains that  ideas  are  true  because  they  are 
useful ;  the  right  wing  maintains  that  they 
are  useful  because  they  are  true. 

Let  us  now  examine  more  in  detail  this 
modified  form  of  the  pragmatic  doctrine. 
In  the  first  place,  it  is  obvious  that  this  is 
an  attempt  to  steer  a  middle  course  between 
radical  pragmatism  and  the  old  correspond- 
ence theory.  It  has  sought  for  a  combi- 
nation of  pragmatism  and  common  sense  as 
a  sort  of  golden  mean.  The  result  has 
been,  on  the  one  hand,  that  it  has  avoided 
some  of  the  difficult  positions  of  the  radical 
form ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  question- 
able whether  it  has  not  sought  to  reconcile 
several  things  which  are  quite  irreconcilable. 
It  would  seem  to  be  trying  that  notoriously 
difficult  feat  of  eating  one's  cake  and  keep- 
ing it  too.  Thus  it  is  hard  to  see  how 
"  satisfactions  "  and   the   concrete  "  links  of 


I06  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

experience  "  are  "  indispensable  "  to  truth,  if 
at  the  same  time  an  idea  can  be  true  in  ad- 
vance of  and  apart  from  these  satisfactions 
and  Hnks  of  experience. 

The  modified  pragmatist  view  would 
therefore  seem  to  be  open  to  two  different 
interpretations,  according  to  which  of  its 
two  seemingly  inconsistent  factors  one 
chooses  to  emphasize  as  the  essential  part. 
If  one  emphasizes  the  assertion  that  the 
idea  is  true  before  it  is  verified,  that  its 
truth  consists  just  in  the  existence  of  the 
relation  between  it  and  its  object  even  if 
this  be  "  short-circuited,"  and  that  it  is  its 
truth  that  makes  it  useful  rather  than  its 
usefulness  that  makes  it  true,  it  is  indeed 
no  longer  subject  to  criticism,  because  it 
has  simply  turned  into  the  old  correspond- 
ence theory  under  a  new  name.  All  that 
was  distinctive  in  it  has  evaporated,  and  all 
that  remains  is  the  name  "  pragmatic  "  — 
like  the  grin  on  the  face  of  Alice's  Cheshire 
cat  after  the  face  of  the  cat  had  faded 
away.     But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  we  choose 


THE  PRAGMATIC  VIEW  OF  TRUTH    107 

to  say  that  the  indispensability  of  the  sat- 
isfactions and  of  the  concrete  Hnks  of  ex- 
perience forms  the  essential  part  of  the 
doctrine,  then  we  shall  have  avoided  the 
frying  pan,  indeed,  but  only  to  fall  danger- 
ously near  the  fire.  There  will,  of  course, 
still  be  this  difference  between  moderate 
and  radical  pragmatism  :  that  for  the  former 
the  object  must  really  "  be  there "  and  that 
the  satisfactions,  etc.,  though  indispensable, 
will  not  be  sufficient.  Yet,  if  these  satis- 
factions are  really  indispensable,  a  belief 
which  is  verifiable  but  not  yet  verified  is 
not  true.  My  idea  that  my  friend  is  in 
Constantinople  will  not  be  a  true  idea  (even 
if  as  a  fact  he  is  there)  until  I  have  actu- 
ally gone  through  the  links  of  concrete  ex- 
perience which  verify  it  and  actually  have 
the  satisfactions  which  witness  to  its  truth. 
Truth  and  the  test  of  truth  will  thus  still 
be  largely  confused ;  the  proof  of  a  propo- 
sition will  form  at  least  a  part  of  its  true- 
ness.  This  doctrine,  therefore,  though 
differing   in   some  details  from   the   radical 


Io8  WHAT  IS   PRAGMATISM? 

pragmatism  of  Professor  Dewey,  will  still 
be  subject  to  most  of  the  criticisms  to  which 
the  latter  view  (as  Professor  James  himself, 
apparently,  sees  perfectly  well)  is  so  manifest 
a  mark.  Hence,  modified  pragmatism  must 
either  return  to  the  much-abused  correspon- 
dence theory  or  else  accept  most  of  the 
absurd  consequences  to  which  radical  prag- 
matism will  lead  us.  I  see  no  way  of  avoiding 
this  dilemma.  To  stick  to  both  interpreta- 
tions and  to  use  the  word  truth  in  "  this  large 
loose  way  "  is  to  contradict  oneself.  One  can- 
not long  ride  upon  two  horses  going  in  op- 
posite directions ;  one  must  choose  between 
them  —  or  fall  between  them.  Here  as  else- 
where it  will  ultimately  prove  impossible  to 
run  with  the  hare  and  hunt  with  the  hounds. 
We  come  now  at  last  to  a  closer  examina- 
tion of  the  more  radical  pragmatic  view 
of  the  truth  relation.  And  to  understand 
it  thoroughly  we  must  first  notice  a  cer- 
tain peculiarity  in  the  use  of  the  important 
word  idea  which  will  go  far  to  explain 
the   rather  startling   conclusion    as    to   the 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW   OF  TRUTH    IO9 

nature  of  truth  to  which  it  comes.  When 
one  first  dips  into  the  literature  of  pragma- 
tism, one  is  somewhat  mystified  by  recurrent 
phrases  such  as  "  the  efficient  working  of 
an  idea,"  "  the  idea's  leading,"  etc.  The 
various  uses  of  this  phrase  point,  I  think, 
to  an  important  difference  in  the  intellectual- 
istic  and  the  pragmatic  meaning  of  "  idea  " 
in  connection  with  the  truth  problem.  To 
the  pragmatist  the  word  idea  means  any 
representative  content  that  leads  to  action 
or  helps  to  bring  order  into  a  given  situa- 
tion. Hence  Professor  Dewey's  synonym 
for  it  —  namely,  "  plan  of  action."  Thus 
the  important  thing  about  an  idea  to  the 
pragmatist  is,  not  its  present  relation  to  its 
object,  but  its  influence  upon  conduct,  its 
motive  power  or  guiding  force.  Starting 
from  the  biological  view  of  mind,  the  prag- 
matist insists  that  the  purpose  of  thought 
is,  not  the  acquisition  of  "  truth,"  but  the 
useful  reaction  of  the  organism  upon  the 
environment.  Our  "ideas"  are  thus  essen- 
tially   tools    by    which    to    handle    and    to 


no  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

mold  our  experience.  In  short,  they  are 
to  the  pragmatist,  as  I  have  said,  not  so 
much  beHefs  or  judgments  as  "plans  of 
action."  From  this  it  follows  naturally  and 
almost  inevitably  that  if  the  term  truth  is 
to  be  applied  to  such  "  ideas,"  it  cannot  be 
in  the  sense  of  "  correspondence "  as  de- 
fined above.^  As  "  a  plan  of  action "  is 
not  an  assertion  about  something  outside 
our  experience,  but  a  way  of  grouping  our 
data  or  guiding  our  conduct,  it  cannot,  of 
course,  be  maintained  that  its  "truth"  depends 
upon  its  relation  to  some  outer  reality. 
One  indeed  may  wonder  that  the  word 
truth  should  be  applied  to  it  at  all,  but  once 
so  applied  it  is  evident  that  there  is  nothing 
for  it  to  mean  but  usefulness  and  successful 
action.  A  true  idea  in  this  sense  is  there- 
fore one  that  works.  This  is  especially 
manifest  in  the  case  of  the  laws  of  science, 
and  I  believe  it  was  partly  in  this  connection 
that  the  pragmatic  identification  of  truth  with 
usefulness  first  suggested  itself.     In  so  far  as 

^  See  p.  67 


THE   PRAGMATIC  VIEW  OF  TRUTH    III 

a  scientific  law  is  a  mere  short-hand  expres- 
sion for  our  experience,  a  mere  formula  for 
the  condensed  description  of  perceptions,  its 
truth  may  be  said  to  consist  in  its  work- 
ing.^ In  short,  if  an  hypothesis  proves 
itself  a  useful  tool,  it  is  forthwith  called 
true,  —  true,  that  is,  for  immediate  practical 
purposes,  —  and  thus  truth  comes  to  be  re- 
garded as  merely  a  "form  of  the  good." 
As  an  example,  Professor  Dewey  speaks  of 
the  invention  of  the  telephone  as  a  plan 
of  action  or  idea  that  worked  itself  out,  i.e. 
proved  itself  "  true."  And  it  is  evident 
that  if  the  word  trtie  is  to  be  applied  to 
inventions  and  similar  plans  of  action  at  all, 
their  "  truth  "  is  indeed  "  wholly  an  affair 
of  making  them  true." 

Before  entering  any  criticism  upon  this 
view  we  must  first  note,  for  the  sake  of 
our  own  comprehension  of  the  subject,  the 

^  A  deeper  reflection,  however,  will  inevitably  raise  the 
question  why  it  works,  and  this  can  hardly  be  answered  with- 
out reference  to  an  environing  reality ;  and  thus  we  shall  be 
brought  back  to  the  stricter  sense  of  truth  and  the  correspond- 
ence theory. 


112  WHAT  IS   PRAGMATISM? 

decidedly  different  meaning  given  to  "idea" 
by  the  non-pragmatist.  When  the  non- 
pragmatist  says  an  "  idea  "  is  true,  he  uses 
the  word  to  mean,  not  a  plan  of  action, 
but  a  judgment.  To  him  an  idea  which 
is  not  a  judgment  but  is  a  mere  image  or 
plan  or  formula  may  lead  in  what  direction 
it  likes,  it  may  be  useful,  successful,  satis- 
factory, or  their  opposites,  it  may  have 
any  function  you  will,  but  it  is  not  in  the 
category  of  things  that  can  be  either  true 
or  false.  In  Bosanquet's  words,  "truth  and 
falsehood  are  coextensive  with  judgment."^ 
This  being  the  case,  the  non-pragmatist 
does  not  and  cannot  consider  "  true "  a 
predicate  of  the  same  kind  as  "  benevolent  " 
or  "  luminous  "  or  "  good  "  (as  the  pragma- 
tist  suggests),  nor  can  he  identify  "  truth  "  (in 
the  sense  of  trueness)  with  a  "  function  "  or 
"  leading  "  or  "  process." 

And  now  to  return  to  the  pragmatist 
use  of  the  word.  Granted  that,  if  the 
term    truth    is    to    be    applied    to     a    plan 

^  "  Logic,"  Vol.  I,  p.  72. 


THE   PRAGMATIC  VIEW  OF  TRUTH    I13 

or  purpose  at  all,  it  may  as  well  mean 
successful  execution  as  anything  else,  is 
not  the  use  of  the  word  in  this  connec- 
tion, to  say  the  least,  unnatural  and  unnec- 
essarily confusing?  An  invention  may  be 
useful  and  may  work  and  be  successful, 
my  plan  to  go  downtown  may  be  wise  and 
good,  but  to  call  either  of  them  true  would 
seem  to  be  a  step  toward  the  invention  of 
a  new  language. 

And  in  spite  of  the  undoubted  truth  in 
the  biological  view  of  mind,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  all  ideas  in  some  sense  work  them- 
selves out,  it  is  not  true  that  all  "  ideas," 
judgments  included,  are  merely  plans  of 
action.  A  judgment  has  at  least  two  differ- 
ent aspects.  From  one  point  of  view  it  is 
indeed  a  motor  idea  which  influences  con- 
duct and  works  itself  out.  From  another 
point  of  view  it  is  an  assertion  about  some 
reality  not  itself,  and  between  it  and  that 
reality  there  is  a  relation  which  simply  is  not 
to  be  identified  with  the  results  of  the  judg- 
ment.     This    distinction    between    the    two 


114  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

aspects  of  a  judgment,  or  between  judgments 
and  plans  of  action,  seems  to  be  quite 
overlooked  by  thinkers  of  widely  different 
schools  —  e.g.  by  Professor  Dewey,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  Professor  Royce,^  on  the  other. 
These  writers  often  deal  with  the  subject  of 
truth  as  if  there  were  no  distinction  between 
judgment  and  purpose.  Thus  Professor 
Dewey  tries  to  interpret  judgments  as  plans 
of  action  by  saying  "  the  agreement,  corre- 
spondence, is  between  purpose,  plan,  and  its 
own  execution,  fulfillment."^  But  take  any 
ordinary  judgment  such  as  "  The  sun  is  shin- 
ing," or  "  The  Greeks  defeated  the  Persians 

^  Professor  Moore  has  conclusively  shown  that  if  "  idea  " 
be  taken  to  mean  purpose,  as  Royce  insists  it  shall,  then  the 
"truth"  of  an  idea  must  be  the  fulfillment  of  the  purpose 
within  our  experience,  and  not  (as  Royce  says)  the  "corre- 
spondence between  our  ideas  and  their  objects."  To  reach 
any  relation  between  an  idea  and  a  reality  outside  of  one's 
private  stream  of  consciousness,  Royce  has  practically  to  give 
up  the  purposive  function  of  ideas  as  their  most  essential 
characteristic,  and  to  speak  of  them  as  representative.  See 
"The  World  and  the  Individual,"  Lectures  I,  VII,  and  VIII, 
and  Moore's  "  Some  Logical  Aspects  of  Purpose,"  in  "  Studies 
in  Logical  Theory,"  pp.  341-382. 

2  "  The  Control  of  Ideas  by  Facts,"  >«r.  of  Phil.,  Vol.  IV, 
p.  202. 


THE   PRAGMATIC  VIEW  OF  TRUTH     II5 

at  Salamis."  Where,  in  this  case,  is  the  plan 
and  where  the  fulfillment?  Or  take  at  ran- 
dom any  judgment  from  Professor  Dewey's 
writings  —  for  example,  this,  "  Reality  as  such 
is  an  entire  situation."  How  can  this,  at 
least  without  much  forced  and  unnatural  in- 
terpretation, be  called  ""apian  of  actio^i'"} 
To  reduce  all  judgments  to  plans  of  action, 
to  add  that  plans  of  action  are  true  because 
they  work,  and  to  conclude  that  therefore 
the  truth  of  a  judgment  consists  in  its  work- 
ing is  hardly  a  cogent  syllogism. 

We  come  now  to  our  final  evaluation  of 
the  radical  pragmatic  view  of  the  truth  rela- 
tion. For  the  radical  pragmatist,  truth  is  to 
be  identified  with  "  the  psychological  or  bio- 
logical processes  by  which  it  is  pursued  and 
attained."  ^  "  The  effective  working  of  the 
idea  and  its  truth  are  one  and  the  same 
thing,"  for  it  is  "an  experienced  relation." 
The  truth  of  an  idea  is  "  an  event,  a  process, 
the  process,  namely,  of  its  verifying  itself,  its 
verification." 

^Professor  Montague  in  the/our.  of  Phil.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  100. 


Il6  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

One  here  feels  tempted  to  ask :  If  truth  be 
really  identical  with  its  proof,  if  it  be  nothing 
but  the  process  of  its  verification,  or  the  pro- 
cesses by  which  it  is  pursued  and  attained, 
what  is  it  that  is  proved  and  verified,  what  is 
it  that  is  pursued  and  attained?  Are  we 
verifying  verification  and  pursuing  pursuit  ? 
This  indeed  sounds  like  logomachy,  but  it 
really  is  not.  For  surely  verification  is  veri- 
fication of  something.  If  you  say  it  is  the 
verification  of  the  idea,  just  what  do  you 
mean .?  Certainly  not  the  verification  of  the 
idea  as  a  mere  psychical  existent.  It  must 
be,  if  it  is  anything  at  all,  the  verification  of 
the  idea's  trueness,  the  demonstration  that 
its  claim  is  a  rightful  claim  —  is  a  rightful 
claim,  mind  you,  not  will  be  rightful.  Here, 
let  us  say,  is  an  assertion.  As  yet  it  is  a 
mere  claim.  But  it  claims  to  be  true — ue. 
it  claims  that  it  is  true.  Now  you  verify  it. 
It  thereby  becomes  "  a  truth,"  but  what  you 
have  verified  is  that  it  was  true  already. 
The  very  fact,  therefore,  that  you  verify  pre- 
supposes that  the  trueness  of  the  assertion  or 


THE   PRAGMATIC  VIEW  OF  TRUTH    I17 

claim  is  something  prior  to  and  independent 
of  its  verification.  The  very  use  of  the 
words  veriJicatio7i  and  proof  presupposes 
that  truth  is  something  distinct  from  any 
process  of  proof.  Thus,  though  pragmatism 
may  properly  speak  of  successful  and  satis- 
factory experiences,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  it 
can  consistently  use  the  term  verification  at 
all.  To  me,  at  least,  it  would  seem  as  easy  to 
lift  oneself  by  one's  boot  straps  as  to  compre- 
hend how  truth  can  consist  in  the  process  of 
its  own  verification,  or  how  it  (or  anything 
else,  for  that  matter)  can  be  "  the  processes 
by  which  it  is  pursued  and  attained." 

And  now,  to  make  matters  perfectly  clear, 
let  us  apply  to  this  radical  pragmatic  mean- 
ing of  truth  the  same  illustration  which  was 
used  in  the  preceding  lecture  to  bring  out 
the  exact  meaning  of  the  correspondence 
theory.  Poor  Peter,  you  will  remember,  has 
a  toothache,  and  John,  who  is  thinking 
about  his  friend,  has  an  idea  that  Peter  has 
a  toothache.  As  for  the  pragmatist  the 
truth  of  an  idea  means  its  "efficient  work- 


Il8  WHAT  IS   PRAGMATISM? 

ing,"  its  "  satisfactoriness,  "  "  the  process  of 
its  verification,"  the  truth  of  John's  idea  will 
"  consist  in  "  its  satisfactoriness  to  John,  in 
its  efficient  working,  in  its  verifying  itself. 
If  it  works,  if  it  harmonizes  with  John's  later 
experiences  of  Peter's  actions,  if  it  leads  in  a 
direction  that  is  worth  while,  it  is  true  (a 
statement  to  which,  indeed,  all  might  assent), 
and  its  truth  consists  in  this  working,  this 
harmony,  this  verification  process.  John's 
thought,  the  pragmatist  insists,  becomes  true 
only  when  it  has  worked  out  successfully, 
only  when  his  later  experience  confirms  it 
by  being  consistent  with  it,  —  for  remember, 
truth  is  not  verifiability,  but  the  process  of 
verification.  "Truth  happens  to  an  idea. 
It  becomes  true,  is  macte  true  by  events. " 
At  the  time  when  John  had  the  thought 
about  Peter  the  thought  was  neither  true 
nor  false,  for  the  process  of  verification  had 
not  yet  begun,  nothing  had  as  yet  happened 
to  the  idea.  To  be  sure,  Peter  had  a  tooth- 
ache, just  as  John  thought,  but,  all  the  same, 
John's   thought   was   not    true.     It   did    not 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW  OF  TRUTH    1 19 

become  true  until  several  hours  afterward,  — 
in  fact,  we  may  suppose,  not  until  Peter, 
having  cured  his  toothache,  told  John  about 
it.  The  thought,  "  Peter  has  a  toothache,  " 
thus,  as  it  happens,  turns  out  not  to  have 
been  true  while  Peter  actually  had  the 
toothache,  and  to  have  become  true  only 
after  he  had  ceased  to  have  a  toothache.  It 
became  true  only  by  being  proved  true,  and 
its  truth  consisted  in  the  process  of  its  proof. 
One  might,  perhaps,  be  tempted  to  ask  what 
it  was  that  was  proved,  and  to  say  to  the 
pragmatist.  Either  the  satisfactoriness,  the 
successful  leading,  is  a  proof  of  something 
outside  of  John's  immediate  experience, 
something  by  which  his  idea  is  to  be  judged 
and  justified  (in  which  case  truth  ceases  to 
be  a  mere  verification  process  and  becomes 
at  least  verifiability) ;  or  else  it  is  merely 
John's  subjective  feeling  of  satisfaction  and 
of  successful  leading  and  consistency,  with  no 
reference  to  anything  else  to  justify  it,  —  in 
which  case  it  may  indeed  be  pleasant  and 
"  good, "  but  it  is  hard  to  see  why  it  should 


I20  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

be  called  true.  For  suppose  that  at  the 
same  time  with  John's  thought,  Tom  thinks 
Peter  has  not  a  toothache.  Suppose  that, 
being  a  little  stupid  and  perhaps  a  little  hard 
of  hearing,  he  misinterprets  John's  actions 
and  expressions,  and  that  later  on  he  is  as- 
sured by  some  one  equally  misinformed  that 
Peter  certainly  had  no  toothache.  His 
thought  thus  works  out,  is  successful,  har- 
monizes with  his  later  experience,  is  to 
him  genuinely  verified.  The  whole  matter 
ends  here,  and  he  drops  the  question  com- 
pletely, never  investigating  further.  Were 
the  thoughts  of  both  John  and  Tom  true.? 
Now  it  will  not  do  to  respond,  "  No ; 
Tom's  thought  was  7iot  genumely  verified. 
Only  that  thought  was  really  verified  and 
therefore  true  which  would  have  worked  out 
had  both  been  investigated  sufficiently. " 
For  what  do  you  mean  by  "'sufficiently'"} 
Sufficiently  for  what }  To  argue  thus  would 
be  to  presuppose  a  criterion  (apart  from 
the  leading  of  the  thought)  to  which 
the    thought    must    correspond    if   it    is    to 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW   OF  TRUTH    121 

be  true.  If  you  distinguish  between  a 
"genuine "  verification  and  one  that  is  only 
subjectively  satisfactory,  you  appeal  to  some 
other  criterion  than  the  process  of  verifica- 
tion —  in  other  words,  you  go  over  to  the  non- 
pragmatist's  point  of  view.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  you  stick  to  your  pragmatic  criterion 
and  say  that  the  truth  of  the  thought  con- 
sists in  its  actual  satisfactoriness,  then  the 
question  becomes  pertinent:  Were  the 
thoughts  of  both  boys  true  ?  Obviously 
they  were,  for  both  worked,  both  were  satisfac- 
tory, both  were  verified.  Hence  it  was  true 
at  the  same  time  and  in  the  same  sense  that 
Peter  had  a  toothache  and  that  Peter  had 
not  a  toothache.  Nor  is  there  anything 
surprising  in  this,  if  truth  be  nothing  but  a 
particular  kind  of  satisfactory  experience. 
The  principle  of  contradiction  has  no  mean- 
ing and  can  no  longer  hold  if  truth  be  alto- 
gether within  one's  experience. 

To  set  the  problem  in  another  light,  let 
me  put  the  following  dilemma :  Either  there 
is  a  real  and  relevant  world  outside  of  your 


122  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

private  stream  of  consciousness,  —  it  may  be 
a  material  world  or  one  made  up  of  other 
selves,  —  or  else  there  is  no  such  world  and 
you  need  reckon  only  with  your  own  private 
experiences.  If  you  admit  that  this  outer 
world  exists  and  that  you  judge  about  the 
things  or  persons  in  it,  you  must  also  admit 
that  the  relation  between  these  things  or 
persons  and  your  judgments  of  them  is  a 
fact  which  deserves  to  be  recognized,  and 
that,  in  one  sense  at  least,  the  validity  of 
your  judgments  depends  on  this  relation. 
You  may  call  this  relation  truth  or  reserve 
the  term  truth  for  something  else,  as  you 
like;  but,  aside  from  terminology,  once  you 
recognize  this  relation  and  its  bearing  upon 
your  judgments,  you  have  essentially  ac- 
cepted the  non-pragmatist's  position.  On 
the  other  hand,  deny  the  existence  of  this 
relation  and  its  relevancy  to  your  judgments, 
and  you  either  deny  that  there  is  any  world 
outside  your  own  conscious  experience,  or 
else  you  afifirm  that  if  such  a  world  there 
be,  it  is  nothing  and  never  can  be  anything 


THE   PRAGMATIC  VIEW  OF  TRUTH    123 

to  you.  And  when  you  have  done  this,  how 
far  are  you  from  soHpsism  ?  The  non-prag- 
matist  might  be  wilHng  to  admit  that  if 
this  be  a  soHpsistic  world,  "  truth  "  might  as 
well  mean  "  effective  working  "  as  anything 
else.^  But  if  it  be  a  world  in  which  one 
makes  genuine  references  to  outer  realities 
that  never  come  within  one's  private  stream 
of  consciousness,  then  the  relation  between 
those  realities  and  one's  judgment  about 
them  (a  relation  which  from  the  nature  of 
the  case  one  can  never  experience)  is  some- 
thing which  cannot  be  neglected,  but  must 
be  reckoned  with,  call  it  what  you  will.^ 

^  It  is  interesting  to  note  in  this  connection  that  all  Pro- 
fessor Dewey's  and  Professor  Moore's  contributions  to 
"  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,"  as  well  as  most  of  Professor 
Dewey's  more  recent  papers  on  truth  and  knowledge,  could 
perfectly  well  have  been  written  from  the  standpoint  of 
solipsism — and,  in  fact,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  some  of  them 
could  have  been  written  from  any  other. 

■^  The  dilemma  just  proposed  I  suggested  some  time  ago 
in  the  Jour,  of  Phil.  (Vol.  V,  p.  131),  and  shortly  afterward 
Professor  Dewey  replied  to  it  in  the  course  of  an  article  of  his 
in  the  same  Journal  (Vol.  V,  pp.  375-381).  The  gist  of  his 
reply  is  the  insistence  that  my  dilemma  holds  only  for  those 
who  start  with  the  "  metaphysical "  presupposition  of  a 
"  mind,"  on  one  side,  and  "  objects,"  on  the  other  side,  external 


124  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

Before  closing  this  lecture  there  is  one 
question  which  I  should  like  to  put  to  the 

to  it.  The  pragmatist  makes  no  such  presupposition,  but  is 
dealing  with  the  problem  only  from  the  "  logical  standpoint, 
to  which  the  solipsistic  controversy  is  irrelevant ;  —  since  a 
logical  inquiry  is  concerned  only  with  inferential  relations 
among  things,  not  with  preconceptions  about  a  lonely  con- 
sciousness, or  soul,  or  self." 

Professor  Dewey  then  goes  on  to  put  the  following  ques- 
tions, which  he  considers  the  truly  relevant  ones  in  a  logical 
discussion  (and  which  of  course  are  expressed  in  such  a  way 
as  to  indicate  the  pragmatist's  answers)  :  "  (i)  Do  ideas  pre- 
sent themselves  except  in  situations  which  are  doubtful  and 
inquired  into?  .  .  .  (2)  Are  the '  ideas '  anything  else  except 
the  suggestions,  conjectures,  hypotheses,  theories  tentatively 
entertained  during  a  suspended  conclusion?  (3)  .  .  .  Do 
they  serve  to  direct  observation,  colligate  data,  and  guide 
experimentation,  or  are  they  otiose?  (4)  If  the  ideas  have 
a  function  in  directing  the  reflective  process,  does  success  in 
performing  the  function  have  anything  to  do  with  the  logical 
worth  or  validity  of  the  ideas?  (5)  And  finally,  does  this 
matter  of  validity  have  anything  to  do  with  the  question  of 
truth  ?  Does  '  truth  '  mean  something  inherently  different 
from  the  fact  that  the  conclusion  of  one  judgment  is  itself 
applicable    in    further    situations  of    doubt    and    inquiry?" 

(PP-  378-379-) 

To  these  questions  I  think  the  following  answers  may  be 
made:  (i)  The  first  question  is  largely  one  of  terminology. 
For  the  sake  of  the  argument  let  us  grant  that  "  ideas  "  are  to 
be  found  only  in  situations  that  are  doubtful.  This  is 
certainly  true  of  "ideas"  in  the  sense  Professor  Dewey 
attributes  to  the  word.     I  cannot  see  that  this  makes  outer 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW  OF  TRUTH    125 

pragmatist,  —  a  definite  answer  to  which 
might  clear  up  some  of   the  obscurities   of 

reference  and  correspondence  any  less  essential  to  their 
meaning.  (2)  The  second  question  is  much  more  important. 
And  here  too  let  us  accept  the  pragmatist's  answer.  "  Ideas," 
let  us  say,  are  nothing  but  "  suggestions,"  "  conjectures," 
*'  hypotheses,"  "  theories."  But  the  question  now  arises,  IV/tat 
are  "suggestions,"  "theories,"  and  the  like?  Are  not  con- 
jectures, hypotheses,  and  theories  about  something?  Do  they 
not  mean  and  refer  to  something  not  themselves,  and  is  not 
this  object  of  theirs  often  a  contemporaneously  existing  thing? 
Is  not  a  theory  (when  seriously  maintained)  a  judgment  that 
something  is  thus-and-so?  And  if  this  be  the  case,  is  not 
correspondence  (in  the  sense  I  have  defined)  essential?  If 
correspondence  be  ruled  out,  is  not  the  whole  content  and 
significance  of  hypotheses  and  theories  and  the  rest  com- 
pletely lost?  And  does  not  Professor  Dewey  grant  substan- 
tially the  whole  non-pragmatist  contention  for  correspondence 
when  he  writes,  "  The  logical  idea  is  short  for  a  certain  judg- 
ment about  a  thing.  It  states  the  way  an  object  is  judged  to 
be,  the  way  we  take  it  in  the  inference  process,  as  distinct  from 
the  way  it  actually  may  be."  (p.  378.)  (3)  Certainly  hypoth- 
eses and  theories  "  serve  to  direct  observation,  guide  experi- 
mentation," etc.  But  the  prior  and  more  important  logical 
question  (which  Professor  Dewey  omits)  is  this  :  How  do  they 
do  it?  How  comes  it  that  they  manage  to  succeed,  that  they 
lead  us  in  the  right  direction,  while  certain  other  hypotheses 
fail  ?  Theories,  conjectures,  etc.,  of  course  are  instruments  — 
who  denies  it?  But  the  fundamental  question  is  how  it  is 
possible  for  them  to  be  instruments  and  what  it  is  that  makes 
some  successful  guides  and  some  unsuccessful.  So  far  as  I 
can  see   the  pragmatist   has  no  answer  to  this.     The   non- 


126  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

the  subject,  namely  this :  Is  pragmatism 
true,  and  if  so  in  what  sense  is  it  true  ? 

And,  first  of  all,  is  it  true  in  the  pragmatic 
sense?  This  is  certainly  a  question  which 
is  very  hard  to  answer.  Since  pragmatism 
has  worked  satisfactorily  to  the  pragmatist, 
it  evidently  is  true  —  to  him.  But  with 
equal    certainty  it  is   not   true   to  the   non- 

pragmatist  answer  of  course  is  that  hypotheses  succeed  in 
guiding  experimentation  in  so  far  as  they  correspond  to  the 
already  existing  reality  which  is  their  object  and  which  they 
mean.  And  this  brings  us  to  the  fourth  and  fifth  questions, 
to  which  the  non-pragmatist  answer  is,  in  short,  that  the 
idea's  success  in  performing  its  function  is,  no  doubt,  closely 
related  to  its  validity  and  truth,  but  that  the  pragmatist  has 
put  the  matter  just  the  wrong  way  about,  since  it  is  the  truth 
of  the  idea  that  makes  it  successful,  not  its  success  that  makes 
it  true.  Its  success  is,  if  you  like,  the  cause  of  our  recognition 
of  its  truth,  but  the  idea  would  never  have  succeeded  at  all 
had  it  not  first  been  true. 

The  problem  under  discussion  is  indeed  a  logical  one. 
But  for  that  very  reason  it  must  deal  with  something  more 
than  "  relations  among  things."  It  must  consider  also  the 
meaning  of  those  things.  It  must  go  deeper  than  the  mere 
tracing  out  of  what  ideas  do,  as  instruments,  etc.,  in  our  ex- 
perience. The  previous  question  for  logic  is  what  these 
hypotheses  are  and  mean,  and  how  they  act.  And  I  still  be- 
lieve it  impossible  to  face  these  questions  squarely  without 
accepting  the  one  or  the  other  horn  of  the  dilemma  proposed 
above. 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW   OF  TRUTH     127 

pragmatist,  for  to  him  it  is  not  satisfac- 
tory—  it  has  not  been  verified.  It  is  in 
exactly  the  position  of  any  other  unverified 
claim,  and  I  hope  we  need  not  remind  the 
pragmatist  of  his  oft-repeated  assertion  that 
an  unverified  claim  is  not  yet  true.  Prag- 
matism therefore  (like  so  many  other  things 
in  the  pragmatic  world)  is  both  true  and 
false  at  the  same  time.  "  And  the  best  of 
the  joke  is,"  as  Plato  would  say,  that  inas- 
much as  the  non-pragmatists  (as  yet  at  least) 
far  outnumber  the  pragmatists,  it  follows 
that  pragmatism  is  true  in  only  a  small  mi- 
nority of  cases.  Of  course  no  one  (not 
even  a  humanist)  would  seriously  start  out 
to  determine  the  truth  of  a  doctrine  by 
counting  human  heads ;  and  yet  if  it  really 
be  the  case  that  a  doctrine  is  not  true  till 
verified,  and  is  made  true  by  verification,  it 
would  seem  not  altogether  irrelevant  to  con- 
sider the  number  of  those  who  regard  its 
verification  complete. 

But  it  is  evident  that  even  if  pragmatism 
were  true  in  the  pragmatic  sense,  this  would 


128  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

not  satisfy  the  pragmatists.  They  believe 
it  is  true  in  the  non-pragmatic  sense.  Like 
other  rational  beings,  they  are  not  satisfied 
(except  at  times)  with  having  their  doctrine 
accepted:  they  want  to  show  that  it  ought 
to  be  accepted.  They  believe  it  is  true  no 
matter  what  people  think,  already  true 
whether  verified  or  not.  That  is  why  they 
are  so  eager  to  verify  it.  That  is  the  very 
presupposition  of  all  their  argument.  They 
insist,  in  other  words,  that  the  pragmatist 
doctrine  of  truth  is  true  in  the  non-prag- 
matic sense  —  true  on  the  correspondence 
theory  of  truth. 

But  alas !  When  they  do  that,  they  sur- 
render the  whole  matter.  To  insist  that  a 
doctrine  must  be  verified  in  order  to  be  true 
and  to  add  that  this  doctrine  is  true  whether 
verified  or  not,  is  as  simple  a  manner  as  can 
be  found  of  contradicting  oneself.  Pragma- 
tists, I  am  sure, will  call  this  "logic-chopping  " 
—  a  simple  and  useful  device  when  one  has 
been  reduced  to  unavoidable  self-contradic- 
tion.    But   inasmuch   as   this   is  altogether 


THE   PRAGMATIC   VIEW  OF  TRUTH    1 29 

a  matter  of  logic  I  fail  to  see  the  force  of 
the  reproach.  Inconsistency  is  the  one  great 
sin  in  thinking,  and  the  inconsistency  just 
pointed  out  runs  through  all  the  arguments 
by  which  the  pragmatist  seeks  to  prove  his 
position.  At  every  point  he  is  —  no  doubt, 
unconsciously  —  making  use  of  the  very  con- 
ception of  truth  which  he  is  trying  to  refute ; 
he  is  claiming  for  his  doctrine  the  very  kind 
of  truth  which  he  says  is  no  truth  at  all. 
Consistently  he  should  do  the  one  or  the 
other  of  two  things :  either  give  up  his  doc- 
trine of  truth ;  or  else  cease  claiming  that  it 
is  true  and  that  logically  we  ought  to  accept 
it,  and  be  content  with  enjoying  it  and  pro- 
claiming its  satisfactoriness. 

This  latter  is  in  fact  the  course  which  two 
of  the  leading  pragmatists,  in  moments  of 
insight,  have  actually  taken.  Speaking  of 
the  pragmatists  and  their  universe  of  dis- 
course. Professor  James  says,  "  Whether 
what  they  themselves  say  about  that  uni- 
verse is  objectively  true,  i.e.  whether  the 
pragmatic  theory  of  truth  is  true  really,  they 


I30  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

cannot  warrant,  —  they  can  only  believe  it."^ 
And  in  a  spirit  of  candor,  to  illustrate  fur- 
ther the  fact  that  pragmatism  is  a  mental 
attitude  rather  than  a  logical  position,  he 
compares  it  to  general  skepticism.  This,  he 
says,  "  you  can  no  more  kill  off  by  logic  than 
you  can  kill  off  obstinacy  or  practical  joking. 
This  is  why  it  is  so  irritating.  .  .  .  No  more 
can  logic  kill  the  pragmatist's  behavior." 
And  I  may  say  in  passing  that  the  history 
of  pragmatism  amply  confirms  this  assertion. 
With  equal  consistency  Dr.  Schiller  ad- 
mits that  "the  pragmatic  theory  has  to  be 
adopted  before  it  can  be  verified,"  and  that 
therefore  it  would  be  absurd  in  pragmatism 
to  attempt  to  prove  itself  true  to  one  who 
had  not  first  adopted  it.^  It  seems  therefore 
to  be  a  case  of  credo  ut  intelligam.  One  must 
not  expect  to  be  convinced  of  the  pragmatic 
truth  by  vain  arguments ;  one  must  taste  and 

1  "  The  Pragmatist's  Account  of  Truth,"  Phil.  Rev.,  Vol. 
XVII,  p.  i6,  note  2. 

^  See  the  instructive  discussion  between  him  and  Pro- 
fessor Russell  on  this  subject,  in  the /tf«r.  of  Phil.,  Vol.  IV, 
pp.  235-243  and  482-494. 


THE   PRAGMATIC  VIEW   OF  TRUTH     1 31 

see  that  it  is  good.  Nor  are  you  to  think 
this  is  mere  idle  jesting;  it  is  the  logical 
and  inevitable  outcome  of  the  pragmatic 
doctrine  of  truth.  When  this  is  fully  realized 
pragmatism  may  indeed  still  flourish  —  just 
as  "  practical  joking  "  and  "  obstinacy  "  and 
"  general  skepticism  "  and  unreasoning  faith 
still  flourish ;  but  the  consistent  pragmatist 
at  least  will  then  cease  to  argue  and  begin 
rather  to  exhort ;  and  pragmatism  will  be 
recognized  as  being  primarily,  not  a  serious 
philosophical  doctrine,  but  rather  one  of  the 
varieties  of  religious  experience. 

As  I  said  at  the  beginning  of  this  lecture, 
the  pragmatic  doctrine  of  truth  is  the  key- 
stone to  the  whole  edifice.  And  the  in- 
herent weakness  in  it  which  I  have  tried  to 
point  out  affects  fatally  the  entire  super- 
structure. How  it  reappears  in  the  prag- 
matic doctrine  of  knowledge  I  shall  try  to 
show  in  the  following  lecture. 


LECTURE   IV 

PRAGMATISM  AND   KNOWLEDGE 


LECTURE    IV 

PRAGMATISM  AND   KNOWLEDGE 

Every  one  who  has  read  with  attention 
the  Fourth  Book  of  Locke's  famous  Essay, 
and  has  learned  that  knowledge  is  "  noth- 
ing but  the  perception  of  the  connection 
and  agreement  or  disagreement  and  repug- 
nancy of  any  of  our  ideas,"  must  have 
noted  with  surprise  the  fact  that  one  of 
the  four  kinds  of  agreement  between  our 
ideas  is  what  Locke  calls  "  real  existence." 
"  The  fourth  and  last  sort "  (of  agree- 
ment), says  he,  "  is  that  of  actual  and  real 
existence  agreeing  to  any  idea "  —  that  is, 
the  agreement  of  something:  which  "  has 
a  real  existence  outside  the  mind,"  such  as 
"  God,"  with  our  idea  of  it.  It  is  hard,  of 
course,  to  see  what  "  ideas "  agree  in  this 
fourth  kind  of  knowledge,  or  how  the  agree- 
ment of  an  idea  with  something  outside  the 

135 


136  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

mind  can  be  classed  under  knowledge  at 
all  if  knowledge  be  "nothing  but  the  per- 
ception of  the  agreement  of  our  ideas." 
This  inconsistency  in  Locke's  theory  of 
knowledge  has  often  been  pointed  out  and 
indeed  is  perfectly  clear.  But  what  con- 
cerns us  here  is  the  fact  that  it  seems  to 
be  hereditary  and  has  been  handed  down, 
like  the  original  sin  of  Adam  or  —  what  is 
worse  —  like  an  "innate  idea,"  to  Locke's 
lineal  descendants,  our  friends  the  pragma- 
tists.  To  make  this  clear,  however,  will 
require  an  entire  lecture ;  and  we  shall 
therefore  devote  this  hour  to  a  considera- 
tion of  the  pragmatic  view  of  knowledge. 

In  considering  pragmatism's  doctrine  of 
truth,  you  will  remember,  we  found  it  help- 
ful to  outline  first  of  all  the  non-pragma- 
tist's  view,  for  by  noting  what  the  prag- 
matist  denied  we  were  better  able  to 
understand  what  he  affirmed.  The  same 
method  will  be  of  even  more  value  here ; 
hence  before  trying  to  get  at  the  prag- 
matic meaning  of   knowledge    I  shall   take 


PRAGMATISM   AND   KNOWLEDGE       1 37 

up  the  view  which  pragmatism  attacks. 
This  view  has  had  many  formulations, 
but  the  one  first  suggested,  by  the  great 
"  intellectuahst,"  Plato,  is  perhaps  as 
satisfactory  as  any.  It  is  found  in  the 
Theaetetus  and  is  in  these  words:  Knowl- 
edge is  "  true  opinion  accompanied  with 
reason."  There  is  more  substance  in  this 
very  brief  definition  than  may  appear  on 
the  surface,  and  to  make  its  meaning  clear 
it  should  be  divided,  like  a  preacher's  text, 
into  firstly,  secondly,  and  thirdly.  Firstly, 
then,  knowledge  is  a  certain  kind  of  opin- 
ion^ i.e.  it  is  a  judgment  or  thought  about 
something.  Secondly,  it  must  be  true. 
And,  thirdly,  the  individual  who  holds  it 
true  must  have  sufficient  reason  for  so 
doing  —  he  must  be  able  to  prove  it  true, 
at  least  to  himself.  A  word  of  further  ex- 
planation about  each  of  these  may  not  be 
out  of  place. 

Perhaps  the  most  important,  because  the 
most  fundamental,  of  these  three  points  is 
the   first.     Opinion   is  about  something,  it 


138  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

means  or  points  to  something  not  itself, 
and  hence  involves  "  transcendence."  This 
of  course  is  a  terrifying  term,  and  the  prag- 
matist  (vi^ho  denies  transcendence)  makes 
capital  out  of  its  terrors.  Really,  however, 
there  is  nothing  dreadful  about  this  word, 
—  it  is  a  very  simple  thing  after  all, — 
though  no  doubt  sufficiently  mysterious  to 
those  who  start  out  with  the  presupposi- 
tion that  it  is  impossible.  It  means  simply 
this :  that  when  we  "  know  "  or  "  mean  " 
something,  the  object  of  our  thought  is  not 
our  thought  itself  and  may  even  be  some- 
thing completely  outside  of  our  experience, 
past,  present,  or  future.  If  any  of  you  are 
unfamiliar  with  the  term  and  still  think  it 
something  very  hard  and  "metaphysical," 
and  that  it  is  too  "  abstract "  to  be  accepted 
by  common  sense,  let  me  put  you  this  ques- 
tion and  ask  your  answer:  When  you  are 
thinking  of  your  neighbor's  headache,  do 
you  mean  by  that  headache  something  in 
your  experience,  or  something  out  of  your 
experience  but  in   his?     If   you   mean   the 


PRAGMATISM  AND   KNOWLEDGE       1 39 

latter,  you  are  a  believer  in  transcendence. 
This  belief,  in  fact,  is  very  much  older  than 
"  Philosophy "  and  is  one  of  the  fundamen- 
tal principles  of  common  sense  —  as  Pro- 
fessor James  himself  would  doubtless  tell 
you.  It  is,  in  short,  simply  the  belief  that 
you  can  mean  something  which  is  entirely 
outside  of  your  own  experience. 

To  be  sure,  if  we  take  the  view  that 
every  content  of  consciousness,  our  know- 
ing thought  included,  is  merely  so  much 
psychic  stuff  and  nothing  else,  that  it  is 
simply  felt,  like  an  abdominal  pain,  and 
has  no  reference  to  anything  outside  itself, 
then,  of  course,  transcendence  becomes  a 
mystery,  because,  in  fact,  meaning  itself 
becomes  a  mystery.  And  so  the  prag- 
matist  asks.  How  can  a  psychic  state  tran- 
scend itself  ?  How  can  it  mean  anything 
but  itself.'' — One  might  respond  by  the 
question.  How  can  time  pass }  How  can 
a  thing  move.''  —  There  may  be  many  an- 
swers to  questions  such  as  these ;  but  the 
simplest   and   certainly   the    most  empirical 


I40  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

is  just  this :  that  as  a  fact  things  do 
move,  time  does  pass,  and  our  thoughts 
do  meajt  things  other  than  themselves. 
Transcendence  is  merely  one  of  those  ul- 
timately simple  things  which,  just  because 
they  are  ultimate  and  simple  elements  of 
experience,  can  never  be  explained  further, 
nor  analyzed  further,  but  must  be  merely 
recognized  and  accepted.  That  it  is  in 
one  sense  a  mystery  is  of  course  perfectly 
obvious :  so  is  consciousness.  But  to 
prove  by  this  that  it  is  impossible,  and  to 
mystify  ourselves  over  it,  is  simply  gra- 
tuitous mystification.  The  truth  is,  a  cog- 
nitive idea  —  a  thought  which  means  its 
object  —  has  another  characteristic  than 
merely  that  of  being  felt  —  like  a  mos- 
quito bite.  It  has  that  too,  of  course;  it 
is  a  genuine  part  of  the  stream  of  experi- 
ence. But  it  is  more  than  that.  It  means 
something  besides  itself  and,  it  may  be, 
something  outside  of  the  entire  stream  of 
consciousness  to  which  it  belongs.  And 
to  shut  our  eyes  tx)  this  peculiarity  of  our 


PRAGMATISM   AND   KNOWLEDGE       141 

thought  in  the  interests  of  simpHfication 
and  "  concreteness  "  is  very  unempirical,  and 
as  poor  psychology  as  it  is  epistemology. 

So  much  for  what  is  meant  by  saying 
that  knowledge  is  opinion.  And  now  the 
secondly  and  thirdly  of  our  text  from  Plato 
may  be  easily  disposed  of.  The  secondly, 
in  fact,  —  namely  that  the  opinion  must  be 
true,  —  has  already  been  explained  in  my 
two  lectures  on  truth.  But  to  be  in  posses- 
sion of  genuine  knowledge  we  must  have 
something  more  than  opinion  which  happens 
to  be  true ;  we  must,  according  to  the  tra- 
ditional philosophy,  be  also  in  possession  of 
reasons  which  prove  the  opinion  to  be  true. 
This  is  a  subordinate  point  so  far  as  our 
present  purposes  are  concerned  and  may  be 
shortly  dismissed.  In  brief,  it  may  be  said 
that  whatever  sort  of  proof  any  one  —  pfag- 
matist  or  non-pragmatist  —  believes  in,  and 
has  to  furnish,  is  here  relevant.  Of  course  I 
cannot  get  outside  my  own  experience  and 
compare  my  idea  with  the  outer  reality  — 
your  headache,  let  us  say  —  which  it  means. 


142  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

This  kind  of  proof  is  out  of  the  question, 
and  quite  as  much  so  for  pragmatists  as  for 
others,  as  Professor  James  admits.^  But 
there  are  other  ways  of  proving — notably 
the  negative  method  of  consistency,  and  the 
scientific  (or  pragmatic)  method  of  noting 
results.  Only  the  former  method,  to  be 
sure,  gives  absolute  demonstration,  and  the 
latter  alone,  even  at  its  best,  will  not  enable 
us  to  prove  the  truth  of  our  ideas  any  more 
completely  and  absolutely  than  science  can 
prove  that  the  sun  will  rise  to-morrow,  or 
than  history  can  prove  that  it  rose  yesterday, 
or  than  pragmatism  can  refute  solipsism  (a 
performance  which  is  particularly  difficult 
for  pragmatism).  We  can  seldom  attain  the 
absolute  kind  of  proof  furnished  by  mathe- 
matics. But  so  purely  theoretical  an  ideal 
of  demonstration  belongs  rightly  to  an  effete 
rationalism,  and  the  pragmatist  is  certainly 

^  Pragmatists  "  cannot  do  without  the  wider  knower  [who 
should  compare  ideas  with  objects]  any  more  than  they  can  do 
without  the  reality,  if  they  want  to  prove  a  case  of  knowing. 
.  .  .  Whether  what  they  themselves  say  about  the  whole  uni- 
verse is  objectively  true  they  cannot  warrant  —  they  can  only 
believe  iV  —  Phil.  Rev.,  Vol.  XVII,  p.  i6.  note  2. 


PRAGMATISM  AND   KNOWLEDGE       1 43 

the  last  man  who  should  demand  its  realiza- 
tion. In  short,  the  transcendence-view  of 
knowledge  is  no  more  inconsistent  with 
proof  than  is  any  other.  And  with  this 
enough  has  been  said  for  our  present  pur- 
poses of  exegesis,  and  I  trust  the  text  from 
Plato  is  now  sufficiently  clear. 

I  have  gone  thus  into  detail  with  the 
ordinary  view  of  knowledge  because  it  is 
this  view  which  pragmatism  denies.  Our 
next  aim  must  therefore  be  to  get  a  clear 
notion  of  the  theory  of  knowledge  set  up  by 
the  pragmatists  as  a  substitute  for  the  one  re- 
jected. The  essential  characteristic  of  this 
pragmatic  view  is  the  attempt  to  avoid  tran- 
scendence (in  the  sense  outlined  above),  and 
to  present  knowledge  as  a  concrete  expe- 
rience process  entirely  within  the  conscious 
life  of  the  individual. 

To  be  more  explicit,  knowledge  is,  in  the 
words  of  Professor  Dewey,  "  a  doubt-inquiry- 
answer  experience."  It  arises  when  our 
reality,  our  facts,  are  somehow  unsatisfactory' 
and  self-discrepant,  and  it  has  a  definite,  prac- 


144  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

tical  function,  namely  the  reorganization 
of  our  experience  upon  the  basis  of  a  plan  of 
action,  which  brings  definite  good  results 
and  makes  our  experience  harmonious  and 
satisfactory  once  more.  Mere  immediate  ex- 
perience is  not  knowledge  ;  to  be  knowledge 
it  must  be  in  some  ways  disharmonious  or 
insufficient,  it  must  point  to  or  suggest  some 
sort  of  experience  not  itself.  This  further  ex- 
perience when  it  comes  must  bring  harmony 
into  consciousness  once  more,  which  by  ful- 
filling the  need  of  the  preceding  experience 
shall  abolish  knowledge  by  substituting  im- 
mediacy. There  are  thus  three  stages  in  the 
knowing  process.  The  first  is  that  of "  doubt " 
in  which  the  facts  of  experience  show  them- 
selves self-discrepant,  disharmonious,  and  in 
need  of  rearrangement  or  supplementation. 
In  the  second  stage  —  or  that  of  "  inquiry  " 
—  an  "  idea  "  or  "  plan  or  action  "  or  tenta- 
tive arrangement  of  present  and  absent  facts 
is  suggested  and  tried.  Finally,  in  the  third 
stage  this  "  plan  "  is  found  to  work,  and  ex- 
perience once  more  becomes  harmonious 
and  is  no  longer  cognitional. 


PRAGMATISM   AND   KNOWLEDGE       1 45 

To  illustrate  by  two  examples  of  Professor 
Dewey's :  I  hear  a  fearsome  noise  and  am 
frightened.  I  do  not  understand  it.  My 
situation  is  self-discrepant.  Therefore  I  set 
out  to  solve  the  enigma.  I  make  the  hypoth- 
esis that  the  cause  of  the  noise  is  the 
window  curtain  rattling  in  the  wind.  This 
leads  me  to  certain  actions  which  result  in 
the  verification  of  my  hypothesis.  My  ex- 
perience now  is  one  of  satisfaction  rather 
than  of  knowledge,  but  I  am  able  to  look 
back  at  the  second  stage,  where  I  formed 
the  hypothesis,  and  see  that  it  was  cogni- 
tional.  Or,  I  smell  a  sweet  odor.  I  wonder 
what  it  is.  The  odor  thus  ceases  to  be 
merely  an  odor  and  becomes  transformed 
into  a  cognitional  odor  which  means  a  rose. 
This  leads  me  to  certain  acts  which  result  in 
the  full  realization  of  the  rose  by  all  my 
senses.  In  short,  to  sum  up:  "An  experi- 
ence is  a  knowledge  if  in  its  quale  there  is 
an  experienced  distinction  and  connection 
of  two  elements  of  the  following  sort :  one 
means  or  intends  the  presence  of  the  other 


146  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

in  the  same  fashion  in  which  itself  is  already 
present,  while  the  other  is  that  which,  while 
not  present  in  the  same  fashion,  must  be- 
come so  present  if  the  meaning  or  intention 
of  its  companion  or  yoke  fellow  is  to  be  ful- 
filled through  an  operation  it  sets  up."  ^ 

Professor  James's  view  of  knowledge, 
though  varying  in  some  details  from  that 
of  Professor  Dewey,  is  not  essentially  dif- 
ferent. Especially  in  the  attempt  to  avoid 
transcendence  and  to  make  knowledge  a 
thoroughly  "  concrete  "  process  that  "  lives 
inside  the  tissue  of  experience,"  are  the  two 
views  at  one.  To  use  a  distinction  of  Pro- 
fessor James's,  knowledge  is  not  "  saltatory  " 
but  "  ambulatory  "  —  it  is  not  a  leap  from 
idea  to  object  over  an  empty  chasm,  but 
an  experienced  process  of  gradual  transition 
every  step  of  which  is  felt.  "  Intervening 
experiences  are  as  indispensable  foundations 
for  a  concrete  relation  of  cognition  as  in- 
tervening space  is  for  a  relation  of  distance. 

*  Professor  Dewey,  "  The  Experimental  Theory  of  Knowl- 
edge," Mind,  Vol.  XV,  p.  30X. 


PRAGMATISM   AND   KNOWLEDGE       1 47 

Cognition,  whenever  we  take  it  concretely, 
means  determinate  ambulation,  through  in- 
termediaries, from  a  terminus  a  quo  to  or 
toward  a  terminus  ad  quem.  As  the  inter- 
mediaries are  other  than  the  termini  and 
connected  with  them  with  the  usual  asso- 
ciative bonds,  there  would  appear  to  be 
nothing  especially  unique  about  the  process 
of  knowing.  They  fall  wholly  within  ex- 
perience ;  and  we  need  use,  in  describing 
them,  no  other  categories  than  those  which 
we  employ  in  describing  other  natural  pro- 
cesses." ^ 

In  describing  Professor  James's  view  of 
knowledge  I  can  probably  do  no  better  than 
continue  to  quote  from  his  own  lucid  ex- 
position. "  Suppose  me  to  be  sitting  here 
in  my  library  in  Cambridge,  at  ten  minutes 
walk  from  '  Memorial  Hall,'  and  to  be 
thinking  truly  of  the  latter  object.  My 
mind  may  have  before  it  only  the  name, 
or  it  may  have    a  clear    image,  or    it   may 

1  "A  Word  more  about  Truth,"  Jour,  of  Phil.,  Vol.  IV, 
P-  399- 


148  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

have  a  very  dim  image  of  the  hall,  but 
such  intrinsic  differences  in  the  image  make 
no  difference  in  its  cognitive  function. 
Certain  extrinsic  phenomena,  special  ex- 
periences of  conjunction,  are  what  impart 
to  the  image  its  knowing  office.  ...  If  I 
can  lead  you  to  the  hall,  and  tell  you  of  its 
history  and  present  uses ;  if  in  its  presence 
I  now  feel  my  idea  to  be  continued ;  if  the 
associates  of  the  image  and  of  the  felt  hall 
run  parallel,  so  that  each  term  of  the  one 
context  corresponds  serially,  as  I  walk,  with 
an  answering  term  of  the  other ;  why  then 
my  soul  was  prophetic,  and  my  idea  must 
be,  and  by  common  consent  would  be, 
called  cognizant  of  reality.  That  percept 
was  what  it  meant,  for  into  it  my  idea  has 
passed  by  conjunctive  experiences  of  same- 
ness and  fulfilled  intention.  Nowhere  is 
there  jar,  but  every  later  moment  matches 
and  corroborates  an  earlier. 

"  In  this  matching  and  corroborating, 
taken  in  no  transcendental  sense,  but  de- 
noting   definitely    felt    transitions,   lies     all 


PRAGMATISM  AND   KNOWLEDGE        1 49 

that  the  knowing  of  a  percept  by  an  idea 
can  possibly  contain  or  signify.  Wherever 
such  transitions  are  felt,  the  first  experience 
knows  the  last  one.  Knowledge  thus  lives 
inside  the  tissue  of  experience.  It  is  made; 
and  made  bv  relations  that  unroll  themselves 
in  time.  Whenever  certain  intermediaries 
are  given,  such  that,  as  they  develop  toward 
their  terminus,  there  is  experience  from 
point  to  point  of  one  direction  followed, 
and  finally  of  one  process  fulfilled,  the  re- 
sult is  that  their  starting  point  thereby  be- 
comes a  knower  and  their  terminus  an 
object  meant  or  known.  That  is  all  that 
knowing  (in  the  simple  case  considered)  can 
be  known-as,  that  is  the  whole  of  its 
nature  put  into  experiential  terms.  When- 
ever such  is  the  sequence  of  our  experiences, 
we  may  freely  say  that  we  had  the  terminal 
object  '  in  mind '  from  the  outset,  although 
at  the  outset  nothing  was  there  in  us  but  a 
flat  piece  of  substantive  experience  like  any 
other,  with  no  self-transcendency  about  it, 
and  no  mystery  save  the  mystery  of  coming 


I50  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

into  existence  and  of  being  followed  by  other 
pieces  of  substantive  experience,  with  con- 
junctively transitional  experiences  between."^ 

The  prime  characteristic  of  the  pragmatic 
view  of  knowledge  is,  as  I  have  said,  its 
attempt  to  avoid  transcendence.  It  is  that 
which  makes  it  unique  and  distinguishes  it 
from  other  views.  Before  examining  for 
ourselves,  however,  the  possibility  of  knowl- 
edge without  transcendence,  I  should  point 
out  that  each  of  the  leading  pragmatists 
admits  (at  times  at  least)  a  kind  of  tran- 
scendence. In  this,  however,  they  do  not 
seem  to  be  entirely  at  one.  Professor 
Dewey  points  to  a  transcendence  within 
the  individual's  experience,  while  Professor 
James  goes  farther  and  admits  a  reference 
to  things  entirely  outside  of  it. 

In  his  admirably  clear  article,  "  The  Ex- 
perimental Theory  of  Knowledge,"  from 
which  I  have  already  quoted.  Professor 
Dewey  points    out    that    a   cognitional    ex- 

^  "  A  World  of  Pure  Experience,"  Jour,  of  Phil..,  Vol.  I, 
PP-  539-540. 


PRAGMATISM   AND   KNOWLEDGE       15 1 

perience  "  is  contemporaneously  aware  of 
meaning  something  beyond  itself."  The 
odor  which  knows  the  rose,  for  instance, 
is  not  merely  an  odor,  not  merely  "a  flat 
piece  of  substantive  experience  like  any 
other."  If  it  were  merely  that,  there  would 
be  no  question  of  knowledge,  according  to 
Dewey.  It  must  have  the  additional  quality 
of  meaning  or  intending  "something  be- 
yond itself."  "  The  odor  knows  the  rose ; 
the  rose  is  known  by  the  odor;  and  the 
import  of  each  term  is  constituted  by  the 
relationship  in  which  it  stands  to  the  other." 
Now  in  all  this  I,  of  course,  agree.  But 
I  should  like  to  point  out  that  this  fnea7iing 
or  intendmg  of  something  beyond  itself  by 
the  cognitional  experience  does  not  consist 
in  and  is  not  constituted  by  the  subsequent 
concrete  steps  of  fulfillment.  The  cogni- 
tional experience  or  idea  already  means  or 
intends  the  rose  before  the  fulfilling  expe- 
riences come ;  and  should  consciousness 
suddenly  cease  or  be  turned  into  a  new 
direction  and  the  fulfilling  experiences  never 


152  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

come,  it  would  still  be  true  that  the  idea 
in  question  did  really  mean  and  intend  the 
rose. 

But  if  a  cognitive  experience  may  thus 
mean  a  fulfilling  experience  which  has  not 
yet  come  and  which  possibly  may  never  come, 
why  may  it  not  equally  well  mean  or  intend 
an  experience  which  by  the  nature  of  the 
case  never  can  come  ?  I  recognize  that 
Professor  Dewey  here  admits  only  a  refer- 
ence from  one  part  to  another  of  the  in- 
dividual's experience ;  but  if  the  possibility 
of  such  reference  is  thus  once  admitted, 
why  may  not  the  individual's  thought  refer 
to  and  mean  something  in  some  one  else's 
experience  ?  If  it  can  mean  or  intend  some- 
thing beyond  itself  at  all,  it  is  hard  to  see 
why  this  something  must  be  one  kind  of 
experience  rather  than  another.  And  if 
you  grant  this,  the  whole  non-pragmatist 
view  of  transcendence  is  admitted. 

In  some  respects  Professor  James  would 
go  even  farther  in  his  concessions  than 
Professor  Dewey,  for  he  frankly  admits  the 


PRAGMATISM   AND   KNOWLEDGE       1 53 

reference  of  our  thoughts  to  things  quite 
without  our  own  actual  experience.  "  The 
known,"  he  tells  us,  may  be  "  a  possible  ex- 
perience, either  of  that  subject  or  of  another, 
to  which  the  said  conjunctive  transitions 
would  lead  if  sufficiently  prolonged."  ^  This, 
however,  in  Professor  James's  view,  does 
not  involve  transcendence,  apparently  be- 
cause experience  in  general  is  nowhere 
transcended,  because  there  are  connecting 
links  of  concrete  experience  actual  or  at 
least  possible  between  my  thought  and  its 
object ;  and  also  because,  as  he  maintains, 
my  thought's  reference  to  its  object  con- 
sists just  in  those  actual  or  possible  "con- 
junctive transitional  experiences." 

For  one,  I  confess  it  is  hard  for  me  to 
see  how  this  avoids  transcendence.  The 
battle  of  Marathon,  for  instance,  is  cer- 
tainly not  a  part  of  my  experience,  yet  is 
known  by  me;  and  the  fact  that  there  are 
possible  experiences  between  me  and  it  and 

*  "A  World  of  Pure  Experience,"/^''-  of  Phil.,  Vol.  \, 
P-  538. 


154  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

that  if  I  were  now  2400  years  old  I  might 
have  witnessed  the  battle,  does  not  make 
it  any  the  less  true  that  my  actual  experi- 
ence —  and  apparently  all  actual  experience 
—  has  to  be  transcended  if  I  am  to  know 
or  to  mean  it.  In  fact,  once  it  is  admitted 
that  the  idea's  object  may  be  within  some 
one  else's  experience,  the  whole  transcend- 
ence controversy  would  seem  to  be  settled, 
and  the  non-pragmatist  position  granted. 

But  this  Professor  James  would  not  admit. 
Knowledge,  he  insists,  is  ambulatory,  not 
saltatory.  The  meaning  or  reference  of  an 
idea  is  not  a  leap  to  its  object  but  a  con- 
crete and  experienced  process.  "  Knowing 
is  made  by  the  ambulation  through  the 
intervening  experiences."^  "  If  we  believe, 
with  common  sense,  in  so-called  '  sensible ' 
realities,  the  idea  may  not  only  lead  us 
toward  its  object,  but  may  put  the  latter  into 
our  very  hand,  make  it  our  immediate  sen- 
sation. But  if,  as  most  reflective  people 
opine,  sensible  realities  are  not  true  realities, 

"^  Jour,  of  Phil,  Vol.  IV,  p.  399. 


PRAGMATISM   AND   KNOWLEDGE       155 

but  only  their  appearances,  our  idea  brings 
us  at  least  so  far,  puts  us  in  touch  with 
reality's  most  authentic  substitutes  and 
representatives."  ^  They  lead  us  as  near  to 
the  real  object  which  we  mean  as  we  can 
ever  get;  and  there,  of  course,  they  stop. 
The  pity  is  that  Professor  James's  explana- 
tion stops  there  too,  and  hence  fails  to 
touch  upon  the  most  important  part  of  the 
problem  —  the  relation,  namely,  between 
these  last  terms  within  our  experience  and 
the  outer  objects  of  which  these  experi- 
ences of  ours  are  only  "substitutes  and 
representatives."  One  feels  like  asking,  Is 
this  relation  ambulatory  or  saltatory  ?  If  it 
be  ambulatory,  who  is  it  that  ambulates  ? 
It  is  certainly  not  we,  for  we  can  get  no 
farther  directly  than  to  the  "substitutes 
and  representatives,"  never  to  the  "  true 
realities "  which  they  mean.  Or  is  it  the 
object  that  ambulates  ?  If  knowledge  be  an 
experience  process,  who  experiences  it  ?  And 
if    the    relation  between  the  "  true  realities  " 

^/aur.  of  Phil,  Vol.  IV,  p.  398. 


156  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

and  their  "  representatives  "  be  a  saltatory 
relation,  is  not  knowledge  saltatory,  and  are 
we  not  forced  back  to  the  non-pragmatist's 
view  outlined  at  the  beginning  of  this 
lecture  ? 

The  truth  seems  to  be  that  genuine  tran- 
scendence is  unavoidable  wherever  the  cogni- 
tive idea  —  the  knowing  thought  —  means  to 
have  for  its  object  something  besides  itself. 
And  if  this  object  be  something  within  an- 
other's life,  then  there  must  be  a  genuine 
transcendence  of  the  individual's  entire  expe- 
rience—  a  leap  from  idea  to  object  with  no 
felt  transition  —  as,  for  example,  when  I  think 
oi  your  headache.  There  are  no  felt  transi- 
tions between  our  experiences.  My  con- 
sciousness never  runs  into  yours.  Nor  does 
it  solve  the  difficulties  of  this  particular  prob- 
lem to  point  out,  as  Professor  James  does,^ 
that  our  minds  have  space  in  common ;  for 
they  remain  apart  none  the  less,  and  there  is 
no  experience  of  transition  between  them. 
In  Professor  James's  own  words :  "  Neither 

^Jour.  of  Phil.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  565-568. 


PRAGMATISM   AND   KNOWLEDGE       1 57 

contemporaneity  nor  proximity  in  space,  nor 
similarity  of  quality  and  content  are  able  to 
fuse  thoughts  together  which  are  sundered 
by  this  barrier  of  belonging  to  different  per- 
sonal minds.  The  breaches  between  such 
thoughts  are  the  most  absolute  breaches  in 
nature."  ^ 

In  his  "  Psychology,"  Professor  James  has 
rightly  laid  great  emphasis  on  the  difference 
between  a  succession  of  experiences  and  an 
experience  of  succession.  Now  the  prag- 
matist  theory  of  knowledge  requires  both  of 
these.  It  must  have  an  unbroken  succession 
of  intermediating  experiences,  and  it  must 
also  have,  with  this,  the  experience  of  the 
succession  or  transition.  But  in  no  case 
where  my  object  is  something  in  your  expe- 
rience can  either  of  these  essentials  be  proved 
to  be  present ;  and  one  of  them  is  certainly 
absent.  If  there  be  a  succession  of  interme- 
diaries between  my  thought  and  your  head- 
ache—  or  between  my  thought  and  Nebu- 
chadnezzar's headache  —  neither  you  nor  I 
1  "Psychology,"  p.  153. 


158  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

nor  Nebuchadnezzar  ever  experiences  the 
succession.  My  experiences  break  off  where 
yours  begin.  This  fact  is  of  great  impor- 
tance, for  it  bars  out  the  sense  of  transition 
and  fulfillment  which  forms  so  important  an 
element  in  the  pragmatist  description  of 
knowledge,  —  the  sense  of  fulfillment  due  to 
a  continuous  passage  from  the  original  idea 
to  the  known  object.  If  this  comes  at  all 
when  I  know  your  headache,  it  comes  not 
with  the  object  but  quite  on  my  side  of  the 
"  epistemological  gulf."  The  gulf  is  still 
there  to  be  transcended. 

But  let  us  examine  a  case  in  which  the 
object  and  the  thought  which  means  it  are 
both  within  the  same  stream  of  experience  — 
the  type  of  case  best  fitted  to  exemplify  the 
pragmatist  view  of  knowledge  and  the  easiest 
for  it  to  explain.  And  to  make  sure  that 
our  example  is  orthodox,  let  us  take  the  case 
outlined  by  Professor  James.  Suppose, 
then,  I  am  sitting  in  Cambridge,  at  some 
distance  from  Memorial  Hall,  and  have 
in  my  mind   "  nothing  but   a   flat   piece  of 


PRAGMATISM   AND    KNOWLEDGE       1 59 

substantive  experience  with  no  self-transcend- 
ency about  it."  This  flat  piece  of  substan- 
tive experience  is  an  image  of  Memorial 
Hall.  It  is  followed  by  a  series  of  transi- 
tional experiences,  muscle  and  joint  sensa- 
tions, visual  and  auditory  sensations,  which 
change  and  succeed  each  other  rapidly,  and 
connected  with  them  there  is  an  experience 
of  one  direction  being  followed.  Finally,  one 
of  these  exfoliating  experiences  is  the  per- 
cept of  Memorial  Hall,  and  with  this  percept 
comes  a  sense  of  process  fulfilled.  This  suc- 
cession of  experiences  crowned  by  the  sense 
of  fulfillment,  says  the  pragmatist,  is  knowl- 
edge. And  now  let  me  point  out  one  peculi- 
arity of  this  view.  When  the  intermediaries 
have  been  experienced  and  the  process  is  ful- 
filled—  when,  that  is,  we  have  got  our  per- 
cept of  Memorial  Hall  —  "  the  result  is,"  as 
Professor  James  says,  "that  their  starting 
point  thereby  becomes  a  knower  and  their  ter- 
minus an  object  meant  or  known."  ^  This,  of 
course,  is  an  exact  statement  of  the  necessary 

'^Jour.  of  Phil.,  Vol.  I,  p.  540, 


l6o  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

outcome  of  the  doctrine.  The  italics  are 
mine,  but  they  might  as  well  have  been  in 
the  original.  The  idea  of  Memorial  Hall, 
which  we  called  the  knowing  thought,  and 
which  started  the  process  going,  does  not 
become  a  "  knower "  till  long  after  it  has 
vanished  and  has  been  replaced  by  many 
intermediaries  and  finally  by  the  fulfilling 
percept.  In  like  manner.  Memorial  Hall  was 
never  "  known  "  nor  even  "  meant  "  till  then. 
Hence  the  "  kiiower""  did  not  know  nor  mean 
anything  so  long  as  it  existed,  but  became  a 
knower  only  after  it  had  ceased  to  exist  alto- 
gether; and  in  like  manner  Memorial  Hall 
was  never  known  nor  mea^it  until  the  idea 
which  knew  and  meant  it  had  altogether 
vanished. 

Where,  then,  one  naturally  asks,  does 
knowledge  come  in  ?  Not  at  the  terminus  a 
quo,  for  the  idea  has  not  yet  become  a 
knower  —  its  knowing,  according  to  the 
pragmatist,  consists  i^t  the  intermediaries 
and  the  fulfilling  experience.  Not  at  the 
terminus    ad   quern,    for   now    there    is    no 


PRAGMATISM  AND   KNOWLEDGE       l6l 

longer  a  knower  but  merely  a  direct  ex- 
perience. Not  in  the  intermediaries,  for 
with  them  we  have  neither  knower  nor  ful- 
fillment. Of  course  it  may  be  said  that 
when  at  last  I  see  Memorial  Hall,  the 
original  image  of  it  returns,  hence  is  present 
as  a  knower.  But  this  will  not  fit  the  the- 
ory for  several  reasons.  In  the  first  place,  as 
every  psychologist  knows,  the  original  image 
cannot  return  ;  one  like  it  may  come,  but  not 
the  same  identical  experience.  And  indeed, 
if  it  be  this  reproduced  idea,  now  present,  that 
is  the  real  knower,  why  speak  of  the  original 
idea  and  the  intermediaries  at  all?  Why 
not  simply  describe  your  present  experience .? 
Or,  possibly,  the  pragmatist  may  say  that 
when  the  fulfilling  experience  has  come,  we 
look  back  at  the  original  idea  and  see  that  it 
—  what  ?  Knew  the  object  ?  No,  for  it  was 
not  yet  a  knower.  Was  true  ?  No,  for 
truth  consists  in  the  intermediating  and  ful- 
filling experiences  which  at  that  time  did 
not  yet  exist.  Shall  we  say  that  it  resembled 
or  was  like  the  percept  of  Memorial  Hall.'* 


1 62  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

But  no,  for  it  may  have  been  very  unlike, 
and  even  if  it  were  very  like  the  percept,  this 
way  of  putting  things  would  be  a  reversion 
to  the  "  copy  theory  "  in  its  crudest  and  most 
unpragmatic  form.  Or  shall  we  say  simply 
that  it  started  the  process  going  ?  This  un- 
doubtedly would  be  true ;  but  what  of  it  ? 
Does  it  help  us  out  at  all  in  seeing  where 
knowledge  comes  in  ?  The  sensation  of 
hunger  might  have  started  me  toward  Memo- 
rial Hall  quite  as  well ;  does  the  sensation  of 
hunger  therefore  "become  a  knower"  when  I 
look  at  the  Hall  ?  The  truth  is,  when  the 
knowing  thought  which  already  means  some- 
thing not  itself  is  replaced  by  "  a  flat  piece  of 
substantive  experience  like  any  other,"  knowl- 
edge must  at  once  vanish  away,  and  we  shall 
have  left  merely  a  succession  of  experiences 
such  as  the  proverbial  polyp  might  enjoy. 
To  have  a  succession  of  experiences  (or  even 
an  experience  of  succession)  is  one  thing ;  to 
know  is  quite  another. 

There  is  one  more   characteristic   of   the 
pragmatist  view  of  knowledge  which  should 


PRAGMATISM  AND   KNOWLEDGE       1 63 

be  noted  before  we  bring  this  lecture  to  a 
close ;  namely,  its  (perfectly  consistent)  re- 
fusal to  insist  that  knowledge  must  be  true. 
It  does  insist,  of  course,  that  knowledge 
must  be  true  in  the  pragmatic  sense  of  being 
satisfactory,  etc. ;  but,  quite  properly,  it  fails 
to  say  anything  about  its  being  true  in  any 
other  sense.  This  is  as  it  should  be  ;  and 
yet  it  forces  one  to  ask  some  such  question 
as  this :  In  knowledge  do  we  really  know  ? 
Take,  for  example,  Professor  Dewey's 
illustration  already  used.  I  hear  a  fearsome 
noise  and  am  filled  with  fright ;  then,  look- 
ing back  on  my  experience  and  analyzing  it, 
I  come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was  only  the 
noise  of  the  window  curtain.  And  to  vary 
the  illustration  a  little  at  this  point,  let  us 
suppose  that  you  too  have  been  frightened 
by  the  noise,  but  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
it  was  due  to  a  fluttering  awning.  And  let 
us  add  that  you  were  right  and  that  it  really 
was  the  awning  (if  the  pragmatist  will  allow 
us  the  use  of  such  an  expression),  but  that 
I  never  come  to  know  this  and  that  the  win- 


1 64  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

dow-curtain  theory  remains  my  final  and  (to 
me)  perfectly  satisfactory  solution  of  the 
problem.  Is  this  solution  knowledge?  Do 
I  know  that  the  curtain  was  the  cause  of  the 
noise  ? 

Now  if  the  pragmatist  answers  in  the 
negative,  and  maintains  that  this  is  not  a 
genuine  case  of  knowledge,  then  it  follows 
that  knowledge  is  not  merely  a  process  in 
which  a  final  opinion  or  "experience"  is  sub- 
stituted for  a  former  experience  because 
more  satisfactory  to  the  experiencer.  It  is 
more  than  "  an  answering  or  telling  experi- 
ence in  which  an  unquestioned  thing  re- 
places a  dubious  thing."  It  must  not  merely 
be  an  answering  experience ;  it  must  give  the 
true  answer  ("  true "  here  being  used  in  the 
non-pragmatist  sense).  And  it  cannot  then 
be  defined  in  terms  of  experience  alone  as 
a  "doubt-inquiry-answer  experience."  The 
complete  definition  of  knowledge  must  in- 
clude something  which  distinguishes  the 
true  from  the  false,  a  reference  to  a  reality 
beyond  the  experience  itself  which  makes  it 


PRAGMATISM  AND   KNOWLEDGE       165 

true.  It  must  be  defined  in  terms  not  essen- 
tially different  from  those  of  Plato  —  "  true 
opinion  with  reason." 

But  the  pragmatist  probably  will  take  the 
other  course  and  deny  that  correspondence 
to  an  outer  reality  is  necessary.  He  will 
identify  knowledge  with  the  psychological 
process  in  the  individual's  experience  leading 
to  the  final  solution  of  the  problem  and  the 
sense  of  satisfaction  and  fulfillment  —  the  an- 
swering experience  which  substitutes  the 
unquestioned  thing  for  the  dubious  thing  — 
in  short,  with  the  "  window-curtain  theory  " 
of  our  illustration.  He  will  say  that  if  this 
is  in  all  respects  satisfactory  to  me,  it  is  for 
me  knowledge  —  quite  aside  from  the  ques- 
tion whether  it  is  "  true  "  or  not.  Or,  rather, 
he  will  of  course  insist  (if  he  be  consistent) 
that  my  theory  is  true  since  it  satisfies  me 
and  silences  my  doubt.  It  is  true,  that  is,  in 
the  pragmatic  sense. 

I  am  not  altogether  certain,  however,  that 
the  pragmatist  will  be  willing  to  maintain 
this   position    permanently.     For   it    clearly 


1 66  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

has  its  difficulties,  —  difficulties  which  even 
a  pragmatist  must  eventually  come  to  see. 
If  there  were  only  one  individual  involved, 
the  difficulty  might  be  glossed  over;  but 
you  will  remember  that,  according  to  our  ex- 
ample, there  were  two  of  us  concerned,  and 
that  while  I  "  knew  "  the  cause  of  the  noise 
was  the  curtain,  you  "  knew  "  it  was  the  awn- 
ing. Each  of  us  now  goes  his  way  fully 
persuaded  in  his  own  mind.  The  final  ex- 
perience of  each  has  all  the  ear  marks  which 
Dewey  and  James  describe  as  belonging  to 
the  final  term  in  the  knowledge  process. 
For,  be  it  observed,  there  is  not  one  thing 
in  the  pragmatist  description  of  knowledge 
which  would  not  apply  perfectly  well  to  a 
case  of  mistaken  opinion  in  which  the  indi- 
vidual had  and  always  retained  a  complete 
sense  of  certainty.  Here,  in  fact,  is  the  cru- 
cial point  of  the  controversy  —  the  prag- 
matists  insisting  that  knowledge  can  be 
sufficiently  described  and  defined  without  go- 
ing beyond  the  experience  of  the  knowing 
individual ;  the  non-pragmatists  maintaining 


'     PRAGMATISM  AND   KNOWLEDGE       1 67 

that  a  reference  to  something  outside  of  his 
experience  is  essential.  And,  in  a  sense,  the 
whole  problem  may  be  said  to  hinge  on  the 
question  of  mistaken  or  false  opinion.  How 
will  the  pragmatist  interpret  this  ?  —  For  surely 
he  cannot  deny  that  we  are  often  mistaken 
even  when  we  feel  and  continue  to  feel  most 
sure.  —  The  question  really  is  unavoidable: 
When  one  is  mistaken  but  satisfied,  does  he 
know  ?  Did  you  and  I  both  ^uow  the  cause 
of  the  fearsome  noise  when  we  had  contrary 
opinions  concerning  it  ? 

The  pragmatist  cannot  respond  that  he 
means  by  knowledge  only  that  opinion  or 
"  experience  "  which  works  out ;  for  by  hy- 
pothesis both  opinions  work  out,  both  are 
satisfactory  so  far  as  investigated,  so  far  as 
*'  worked."  And  if  he  amends  his  statement 
so  as  to  say  that  he  means  by  knowledge 
only  that  opinion  which  would  work  if 
carried  out,  then  he  is  unconsciously  sur- 
rendering his  whole  case  by  smuggling  in 
the  idea  of  a  conditioning  environment 
which  determines  whether  or  not    the   "  ex- 


1 68  WHAT  IS   PRAGMATISM? 

perience  "  can  work,  and  which  cannot  itself 
be  identified  with  the  experience  or  any  part 
of  it.  He  would  be  saying  that  after  all  it  is 
not  the  "  satisfactoriness  "  of  the  experience 
that  makes  it  knowledge  but  rather  the  ex- 
perience's right  to  be  satisfactory,  —  a  right 
determined  not  by  itself  but  by  the  nature 
of  the  conditioning  environment.  And  so  he 
would  be  back  with  us  again  in  the  "  mys- 
tery "  of  transcendence. 

In  short,  it  would  seem  that  the  pragmatist 
is  logically  shut  up  to  the  one  or  the  other 
of  two  alternatives :  either  he  must  accept 
transcendence  in  the  old-fashioned  sense,  or 
else  he  must  maintain  that  there  is  no  essen- 
tial difference  between  true  and  false  opinion 
and  that  both  are  equally  worthy  of  the  name 
knowledge,  so  long  as  each  remains  satisfac- 
tory to  its  possessor.  You  cannot  lift  your- 
self by  your  boot  straps  ;  nor  give  the  length 
of  a  river  in  terms  of  itself  and  with  no  ob- 
jective unit ;  nor  distinguish  knowledge  from 
error  by  mere  description  of  what  happens 
within  one  individual's  experience.     Unless 


PRAGMATISM   AND   KNOWLEDGE       1 69 

there  be  transcendence,  there  is  no  criterion 
for  judging  between  two  opinions,  except,  of 
course,  the  relative  subjective  satisfactoriness 
of  the  two.  And  if  contradictory  opinions 
may  both  be  knowledge,  provided  they  are 
equally  satisfactory  to  their  possessors,  then 
each  man  is  the  measure  of  all  things  with  a 
vengeance,  and  it  becomes  the  most  blatant 
sort  of  self-contradiction  for  the  pragmatist 
to  try  to  prove  his  view  to  be  knowledge  and 
ours  error.  —  As  I  have  said  in  another  con- 
nection, the  thing  for  him  to  do  is  to  feel — 
and  to  exhort. 

There  is  an  old  story,  which  many  of  you 
may  have  heard,  of  a  countryman  going  to 
a  circus  and  standing  spellbound  and  in- 
credulous before  a  dromedary  with  its  many 
humps  and  its  impossible  legs  and  neck.  All 
the  other  sight-seers  passed  out  of  the  men- 
agerie, but  he  still  remained  with  his  eyes 
riveted  on  the  beast.  Finally,  at  the  end  of 
half  an  hour,  he  drew  himself  together,  with 
the  proud  consciousness  of  the  triumph  of 
reason  over  the  senses,  and  exclaimed: 
"  Hell !     There  ain't  any  such  animal !  " 


I70  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

The  attitude  of  our  pragmatist  friends 
toward  transcendence  is  not  essentially  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  the  farmer  toward  the 
dromedary.  They  cannot  frame  a  judgment 
about  anything  outside  of  themselves,  they 
cannot  even  claim  the  truth  of  their  own 
theory,  without  presupposing  the  thing  they 
deny.  It  is  there,  plainly,  before  their  very 
eyes.  Yet  they  bravely  maintain  their 
stand  —  like  the  farmer.  And  their  reason 
for  so  doing,  moreover,  seems  to  be  essen- 
tially the  same  as  his.  There  couldn't  be 
any  such  animal  as  a  dromedary  because  it 
looked  so  different  from  the  cow  and  the 
pig  and  the  other  beasts  of  the  farm.  So 
there  can't  be  any  such  thing  as  tran* 
scendence  because  it  is  so  different  from 
the  "  concrete  "  experience  processes  studied 
by  psychology.  Hence  what  passes  for 
transcendence  must  be  explained  away  in 
terms  of  experience  "  with  no  mystery 
about  it."  To  reduce  all  mental  states  to 
their  simplest  terms  is  certainly  one  of 
the  proper   aims  of   the  student  of  psychol- 


PRAGMATISM  AND   KNOWLEDGE       171 

ogy  and  epistemology,  and,  perhaps,  it  is  not 
surprising  that  the  pragmatist  seeks  to  re- 
gard the  cognitive  idea  which  means  its 
object  as  "  nothing  but  a  flat  piece  of  sub- 
stantive experience  "  with  no  nonsense  about 
it.  To  interpret  the  knowing  thought  as  be- 
longing to  the  same  general  class  as  the 
mosquito  bite  is  doubtless  a  consummation 
devoutly  to  be  wished.  But,  unfortunately, 
the  knowing  thought  resists  any  such  simpli- 
fication. It  means  more  than  it  is.  If  tran- 
scendence is  a  mystery,  it  is  at  least  a  very 
real  mystery,  and  the  attempt  to  ignore  it  or 
to  explain  it  away  is  bound  to  end  in  failure. 
It  is  not  true  that  everything  is  like  every- 
thing else.  There  are  several  things  in  this 
world  which  are  sui  generis.  One  of  these 
things  is  the  dromedary.  Another  is  knowl- 
edge. 


LECTURE   V 

PRAGMATISM   AND    RELIGION 


LECTURE   V 

PRAGMATISM    AND    RELIGION 

Somehow  or  other  pragmatism  has  got 
itself  pretty  generally  associated  in  the  pub- 
lic mind  with  religion.  It  seems  to  be  the 
common  impression  that  at  this  critical  mo- 
ment in  the  warfare  of  religion  with  agnos- 
ticism the  pragmatists  have  come  up  to  the 
help  of  the  Lord  against  the  mighty,  and 
that,  thanks  to  their  new-forged  and  new- 
fashioned  weapons,  victory  is  secure.  It  is 
this  belief,  I  suppose,  which  more  than  any- 
thing else  explains  the  wide  and  growing 
popularity  of  the  new  philosophy.  For,  after 
all,  no  other  philosophical  problems  have  so 
great  and  so  permanent  a  hold  upon  the  in- 
terests of  the  people  at  large  as  have  those 
that  deal  with  religion.  For  this  very  rea- 
son, moreover,  no  philosophical  ideas  deserve 
and  require  more  careful  scrutiny  than  those 

17s 


176  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

which  affect  the  religious  views  of  the  com- 
munity. Since,  therefore,  there  is  so  con- 
siderable a  tendency  to-day  to  throw  one's 
cap  in  air  and  shout,  "  The  sword  of  the 
Lord  and  of  Pragmatism !  "  it  behooves  all 
those  who  have  the  interests  of  religion  at 
heart  to  look  carefully  into  the  question 
whence  pragmatism  has  gained  its  religious 
reputation  and  how  well  it  deserves  it.  What 
is  the  nature  and  the  temper  of  this  newly 
patented  pragmatic  sword,  and  is  it  so  sure 
a  defense  that  we  may  with  safety  throw 
aside  for  it  our  older  weapons  ?  Just  what 
is  it  that  pragmatism  proves  and  how  does 
it  prove  it  ?  If  we  trust  our  religious  beliefs 
to  its  defense,  just  what  surety  have  we  that 
they  will  be  defended  and  that  when  we  get 
them  back  again  they  will  still  be  recogniz- 
able? When  the  question  is  put  in  this  way, 
the  controversy  over  the  meaning  and  valid- 
ity of  pragmatism  ceases  to  be  a  merely 
academic  matter,  and  is  seen  to  be  fraught 
with  truly  human  and  living  interest. 

Now  in   itself   pragmatism   is  neither  re- 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  1 77 

ligious  nor  irreligious.  It  is  essentially  a 
doctrine  or  group  of  kindred  doctrines  con- 
cerning the  nature  of  meaning,  truth,  and 
knowledge.  It  is  epistemological  and  logical 
rather  than  metaphysical,  theological,  ethical, 
or  religious.  Hence  in  completing  our  dis- 
cussion of  knowledge,  truth,  and  meaning,  I 
have  finished  all  that  I  shall  have  to  say  of 
the  fundamental  principles  of  pragmatism.  If 
not  over-scrupulous  about  consistency,  it  is 
possible  to  hold  any  one  of  several  different 
views  on  metaphysics,  religion,  ethics,  etc., 
and  still  be  a  pragmatist,  —  and  in  fact  on 
many  important  metaphysical  questions  our 
leading  pragmatists  hold  very  divergent  posi- 
tions. While  all  this  is  true,  however,  it 
must  not  be  overlooked  that  one's  episte- 
mology  is  pretty  sure  to  color  or  even 
determine  one's  metaphysics,  and  therefore 
to  influence  one's  religious  views  —  so  far 
as  these  are  a  matter  of  reasoning  at  all. 
Whence  two  things  follow.  In  the  first 
place,  there  is  a  certain  family  resemblance 
between    the    metaphysical     and     religious 


178  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

views  of  most  pragmatists,  due  not  so  much 
to  logic  as  to  disposition ;  to  minds  that  hold 
the  pragmatic  view  of  truth  the  same  gen- 
eral type  of  philosophic  attitude  seems  to 
be  natural.  And  secondly,  the  fundamental 
principles  of  pragmatic  epistemology  when 
consistently  applied  to  certain  philosophical 
and  theological  problems  ought  to  determine, 
and  logically  must  determine,  one's  attitude 
toward  them,  whether  as  a  matter  of  fact 
they  do  determine  the  attitude  of  individual 
pragmatists  or  not. 

It  will,  in  fact,  be  recalled  that  at  the  be- 
ginning of  these  lectures  I  set  down  as  one 
of  the  characteristic  features  of  pragmatism 
its  attempt  to  work  out  a  theory  of  reality. 
Unfortunately  for  our  purposes,  however, 
this  is  as  yet  only  an  attempt;  the  prag- 
matic view  of  reality  is  as  yet  in  so  embry- 
onic and  unformed  a  condition  that  it  would 
be  premature  and  unfair  for  a  non-prag- 
matist  to  try  to  state  it.  Its  central  doc- 
trine seems  to  be  that  reality  is  not  stiff  and 
static  and   independent  of   us,  but  is  made 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  1 79 

largely  by  our  interests  and  desires;  and 
that  "knowledge  is  reality  making  a  partic- 
ular and  specified  sort  of  change  in  itself."^ 
Just  how  far  pragmatism  will  carry  this  gen- 
eral doctrine  and  just  what  it  will  make  out 
of  it  remains  as  yet  to  be  seen.  It  is  to  be 
hoped,  in  particular,  that  Professor  Dewey 
will  elaborate  his  view  of  reality  and  formu- 
late it  in  terms  which  the  non-pragmatist 
reader  can  understand.  In  its  present  in- 
cipient state,  as  I  have  said,  it  would  be  un- 
fair for  one  who  is  not  a  pragmatist  and 
cannot  speak  with  any  authority  to  attempt 
to  expound  it,  and  much  more  unfair  for  him 
to  criticise  it.  I  shall,  therefore,  leave  the 
subject  here,  and  simply  refer  any  of  you 
who  would  like  to  know  more  about  it  to 
the  following  sources:  Schiller's  essay  on 
*'  The  Ethical  Basis  of  Metaphysics "  in 
"Humanism,"^  and  his  two  essays  entitled 
"  The  Making  of  Truth  "  and  "  The  Making 

^  Professor  Dewey,  "  Does  Reality  possess  Practical 
Character?"  in  the  volume  of  "Essays  Philosophical  and 
Psychological,  in  Honor  of  William  James,"   p.  59. 

2  pp.  1-17. 


l8o  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

of  Reality,"  respectively,  in  his  "  Studies  in 
Humanism  "  ;  ^  Dewey's  contributions  to  the 
"  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,"  ^  his  series  of 
papers  on  "  The  Control  of  Ideas  by  Facts  " 
in  Volume  IV  of  \ki^  Journal  of  Philosophy  f 
and  his  most  recent  statement  on  the  sub- 
ject (already  quoted  from)  in  the  Columbia 
Festschrift  for  James ;  namely,  "  Does  Re- 
ality possess  Practical  Character  ?  " ;  *  and 
James's  lecture  on  "  Pragmatism  and  Hu- 
manism "  in  his  "  Pragmatism."  ^ 

But  while  I  shall  not  venture  to  expound 
the  pragmatic  view  of  reality  in  general,  I 
believe  I  shall  be  justified  in  discussing  the 
attitude  of  pragmatism  toward  the  particular 
kind  of  metaphysical  problem  referred  to  in 
the  title  of  this  lecture — the  religious  prob- 
lem. On  this  many  of  the  leading  prag- 
matists  have  very  decided  views,  —  views 
determined,  as  I  said  above,  largely  by  nat- 
ural disposition,  —  and  these  views  they  have 
expressed  clearly  and  at  considerable  length. 

1  pp.  179-203, 421-451-  ^  pp- 1-85- 

8  pp.    197-203,  253-259,  309-319. 

*  pp.  53-80-  6  pp.   239-270. 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  l8l 

Moreover,  the  fundamental  epistemological 
principles  of  pragmatism  have  a  necessary 
and  direct  bearing  upon  the  religious  prob- 
lems which  even  a  non-pragmatist  has  a 
right  to  point  out.  The  present  lecture, 
therefore,  falls  naturally  into  two  parts, — 
it  must  deal  with  the  general  attitude  which 
most  pragmatists  by  temperament  hold  to- 
ward religion,  and,  secondly,  it  must  outline 
more  definitely  and  in  particular  the  view 
which  pragmatism  as  such  ought  to  hold  if  its 
presuppositions  are  to  be  logically  carried  out. 
The  same  temperamental  bias  which 
makes  the  pragmatist  lean  toward  a  vol- 
untaristic  psychology  and  define  truth  in 
terms  of  value  usually  tends  to  make  him 
also  a  pluralist  rather  than  a  monist,  a  be- 
liever in  free  will  rather  than  in  determin- 
ism, an  upholder  of  the  strenuous,  dynamic, 
dramatic  view  of  the  universe  in  which  there 
are  real  dangers  and  genuine  crises,  rather 
than  an  advocate  of  absolutism  with  its 
peaceful  and  static  world  in  which  every- 
thing is  saved   from   all   eternity.     To   the 


1 82  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

pragmatist  of  the  James-Schiller  type,  re- 
ligion means  something  very  vital  and  real. 
The  religious  view  of  the  world  for  him 
is  not  just  the  naturalistic  view  under  a 
new  light  and  with  a  new  name,  as  is  the 
case  too  often  with  some  Hegelian  philoso- 
phers; it  is  a  genuinely  and  practically  dif- 
ferent world  —  different  in  the  pragmatic 
sense  of  making  a  differe7ice.  "  Religion," 
says  Professor  James,  "  in  her  fullest  exercise 
of  function,  is  not  a  mere  illumination  of 
facts  already  elsewhere  given,  not  a  mere 
passion,  like  love,  which  views  things  in  a 
rosier  light.  It  is  indeed  that,  but  it  is 
something  more ;  namely,  a  postulator  of 
new  facts  as  well.  The  world  interpreted 
religiously  is  not  the  materialistic  world  over 
again,  with  an  altered  expression ;  it  must 
have,  over  and  above  the  altered  expression, 
a  natural  constitution  different  at  some 
points  from  that  which  a  materialistic  world 
would  have.  It  must  be  such  that  different 
events  can  be  expected  in  it,  different  con- 
duct be  required."^ 

^  "  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  518. 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  183 

And,  to  be  more  explicit,  the  pragmatic 
temper  finds  especially  congenial  the  psy- 
chological rather  than  the  scholastic  view 
of  religion.  It  likes  to  look  upon  religion 
neither  as  a  divine  revelation  nor  as  a  phil- 
osophical construction,  but  as  an  essentially 
human  product  and  one  which  gets  its  justi- 
fication and  authority,  and  its  proof  (so  far 
as  it  has  any),  from  the  very  nature  of  man, 
and  from  its  own  usefulness  to  man.  Pro- 
fessor James  speaks  of  his  method  of  evalu- 
ating religions  as  "  the  elimination  of  the 
humanly  unfit  and  the  survival  of  the  hu- 
manly fittest,  applied  to  religious  beliefs " ; 
and,  he  adds,  "if  we  look  at  history  candidly 
and  without  prejudice,  we  have  to  admit 
that  no  religion  has  ever  in  the  long  run 
established  or  proved  itself  in  any  other  way. 
Religions  have  approved  themselves ;  they 
have  ministered  to  sundry  vital  needs  which 
they  found  reigning.  When  they  violated 
other  needs  too  strongly,  or  when  other 
faiths  came  which  served  the  same  needs 
better,  the  first  religions  were  supplanted."^ 

^  "  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,"  p.  331. 


1 84  WHAT  IS   PRAGMATISM? 

Hence  the  pragmatist  is  likely  to  look 
with  a  good  deal  of  favor  on  the  "  psychology 
of  religion "  and  to  emphasize  the  human 
utility  of  the  various  religious  concepts. 
Nor  does  this  involve  any  lack  of  belief  in 
the  religious  view  of  the  universe  on  the 
part  of  the  pragmatist.  He  is  indeed 
skeptical  of  the  value  of  the  historical 
proofs  of  God,  and  is  the  chief  antagonist  of 
the  idealistic  Absolute.  Yet,  for  all  that,  he 
is,  as  a  rule,  essentially  and  temperamentally 
religious,  and  he  has  his  own  arguments  for 
a  religious  Weltanschauung.  One  of  these 
he  finds  in  the  very  nature  of  man  and  of  re- 
ligion as  portrayed  by  contemporary  psy- 
chology. Religion  goes  deeper  than  do  any 
of  its  intellectual  formulations  ;  it  springs  not 
from  the  abstract  reason  but  from  the  whole 
man.  It  is  biological  rather  than  intellec- 
tual, and  is  an  almost  instinctive  reaction  of 
man  to  his  environment.  Religious  belief  of 
some  kind  is  a  normal  and  almost  a  neces- 
sary human  product,  and  for  this  reason  may 
be  and  (in  fact)  must  be  trusted.     Moreover, 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  1 85 

our  trust  in  it  is  justified  in  the  same  gen- 
eral way  in  which  scientific  hypotheses  are 
justified:  it  stands  the  test  of  usefulness.  It 
works;  it  ministers  to  human  needs  ;  it  com- 
bines harmoniously,  on  the  whole,  with  hu- 
man experience,  and  it  furthers  human  life 
and  happiness.  This,  says  the  pragmatist, 
is  the  only  kind  of  verification  to  be  found 
in  science,  and  though  in  the  case  of  reli- 
gion the  verification  is  much  less  exact  and 
complete,  it  is  essentially  of  the  same  nature 
and  is  sufficient  to  justify  our  trust  until 
positively  overthrown.  For  although  the 
beliefs  of  religion  are  as  yet  only  partially 
verified,  that  is  what  one  must  expect  from 
the  enormous  magnitude  and  complexity  of 
religion's  problem ;  and  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, too,  that  the  relatively  simple  "  laws  " 
and  "  truths "  of  science,  now  universally 
accepted,  were  one  day  in  the  same  position 
and  started  out  as  mere  postulates.  "  Sci- 
ence too  takes  risks,  "  as  Schiller  says,  "  and 
ventures  herself  on  postulates,  hypotheses, 
and  analogies,  which  seem  wild,  until    they 


1 86  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

are  tamed  to  our  service  and  confirmed  in 
their  allegiance.  She  too  must  end  by  say- 
ing Credo  ut  intelligam.  And  she  does 
this  because  she  must.  For,  as  Professor 
Dewey  has  admirably  shown,  all  values  and 
meanings  rest  upon  beliefs,  and,  'we  cannot 
preserve  significance  and  decline  the  per- 
sonal attitude  in  which  it  is  inscribed  and 
operative.  .  .  .'  We  start,  then,  always  from 
the  postulates  of  faith,  and  transmute  them, 
slowly,  into  the  axioms  of  reason.  The 
presuppositions  of  scientific  knowledge  and 
religious  faith  are  the  same."  ^ 

Pragmatism  thus  seeks  to  prove  the  truth 
of  religion  by  its  good  and  satisfactory  con- 
sequences. Here,  however,  a  distinction 
must  be  made ;  namely,  between  the  "  good,  " 
harmonious,  and  logically  confirmatory  con- 
sequences of  religious  concepts  as  such,  and 
the  good  and  pleasant  consequences  which 
come  from  believing  these  concepts.  It  is 
one  thing  to  say  a  belief  is  true  because  the 
logical  consequences  that  flow  from  it  fit  in 

^  "  Studies  in  Humanism,"  pp.  361-362. 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  187 

harmoniously  with  our  otherwise  grounded 
knowledge ;  and  quite  another  thing  to  call 
it  true  because  it  is  pleasant  to  believe. 
We  may  conceive,  therefore,  two  perfectly 
distinct  methods  of  verification  through  con- 
sequences. The  first  is  exactly  that  used  by 
science ;  the  second  (namely,  through  conse- 
quences which  flow  not  from  the  idea  as 
such  but  from  our  believing  it)  is  very  far 
removed  from  the  scientific  method,  and  is 
held  only  by  pragmatists  —  if  it  be  really  held 
even  by  them.  That  it  is  so  held  by  some 
at  least,  would  seem  to  be  clear  from  such 
expressions  as  the  following :  "  If  theologi- 
cal ideas  prove  to  have  a  value  for  concrete 
life,  they  will  be  true,  in  the  sense  of  being 
good  for  so  much.  "  "So  far  as  the  Absolute 
affords  comfort  it  surely  is  not  sterile,  it  has 
that  amount  of  value ;  it  performs  a  concrete 
function.  As  a  good  pragmatist  I  myself 
ought  to  call  the  Absolute  true  in  so  far 
forth  then ;  and  I  unhesitatingly  now  do 
so."^    It  would    seem,    therefore,    that   any- 

^  "  Pragmatism,"  p.  73. 


1 88  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

thing  is  true  "  in  so  far  forth "  which  it  is 
comfortable  to  beheve.  But  whether  prag- 
matism really  holds  this  doctrine  is  doubtful. 
As  Professor  Dewey  says,  "  Light  would 
be  thrown  upon  how  Mr.  James  conceives 
this  matter  by  statements  from  him  on  such 
points  as  these :  If  ideas  terminate  in  good 
consequences,  but  yet  the  goodness  of  the 
consequences  was  no  part  of  the  intention 
of  the  idea,  does  the  goodness  have  any  ver- 
ifying force  ?  If  the  goodness  of  conse- 
quences arises  from  the  context  of  the  idea 
in  belief  rather  than  from  the  idea  itself,  does 
it  have  any  verifying  force  ?  If  an  idea  leads 
to  consequences  which  are  good  in  the  one 
respect  only  of  fulfilling  the  intent  of  the  idea 
(as  when  one  drinks  a  liquid  to  test  the  idea 
that  it  is  a  poison)  does  the  badness  of  the 
consequences  in  every  other  respect  detract 
from  the  verifying  force  of  these  conse- 
quences ?"^ 

Certainly  if  pragmatism  means  that  any- 

^  "  What  does  Pragmatism  mean  by  Practical  ?  "  Jour,  of 
Pkil.,  Vol.  V,  pp.  93-94. 


PRAGMATISM   AND    RELIGION  1 89 

thing  may  be  proved  true  if  the  consequences 
of  believing  it  are  comforting,  it  is  provided 
with  a  very  cheap  and  easy  method  of  dem- 
onstration. Pragmatists  are  always  indig- 
nant at  the  common  accusation  that  they 
teach  us  we  may  believe  whatever  we  like ; 
but  it  must  be  admitted  there  is  consider- 
able excuse,  as  Professor  Dewey  has  himself 
pointed  out  above,  for  this  interpretation  of 
their  doctrine.  However,  I  shall  not  press 
this  point  farther  nor  take  seriously  the  im- 
plication that  any  good  consequences  which 
flow  from  our  belief  in  an  hypothesis  can  be 
used  to  prove  its  truth.  And  certainly  if 
pragmatism  does  not  mean  to  use  this  rather 
questionable  method  of  verification,  but  seeks 
to  demonstrate  the  truth  of  relio:ious  doctrines 
purely  from  their  own  proper  and  necessary 
consequences,  it  is  on  good  logical  and  scien- 
tific ground.  How  far  these  consequences 
actually  do  prove  the  doctrines  referred  to  is, 
of  course,  another  question ;  and  it  must  be 
admitted  that  pragmatism  has  as  yet  made 
but  little  serious  attempt  in  concrete  detail 


I90  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

to   furnish    this  sort  of  verification  for  our 
rehgious  concepts. 

So  much  for  the  pragmatist's  way  of  prov- 
ing the  truth  of  our  rehgious  behefs.  But 
this  is  only  a  part  of  what  he  has  to  say  in 
defense  of  faith.  For,  he  continues,  even  if 
the  proof  of  rehgion  be  not  complete,  it  is  at 
least  as  good  as  that  of  the  opposite  view, 
and  therefore,  seeing  that  one  must  choose 
between  rival  hypotheses  neither  of  which 
can  be  demonstrated,  one  has  a  right  to  take 
refuge  in  the  will  to  believe.  For  belief, 
after  all,  is  no  mere  cold  intellectualistic  state 
of  mind,  but  has  in  it  an  element  of  will  and 
of  emotion.  On  vital  questions  where  there 
is  genuine  uncertainty  one  cannot  forever 
keep  decision  in  abeyance.  Hence  the  prag- 
matist,  as  a  general  thing,  takes  his  stand 
and  makes  his  life  venture  on  the  side  which 
promises  most  if  once  accepted.  Life  is 
better,  sweeter,  more  worthy  and  worth  while 
with  some  sort  of  religious  belief  than  with- 
out it ;  hence,  says  the  pragmatist,  since  such 
a  belief  is  at  least  as  well  grounded  as  its 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  191 

rival,  let  us  deliberately  adopt  it  as  a  working 
hypothesis  until  it  is  discredited. 

Thus  a  road  is  opened  to  religious  faith 
even  for  those  who  feel  (as  modern  men  are 
coming  more  and  more  to  feel)  that  demon- 
stration in  religious  matters  is  no  longer  to 
be  expected.  For  such  men,  this  is  perhaps 
the  only  protection  against  a  rather  sad  skep- 
ticism. And  it  is  a  protection  because  it 
shows  that  skepticism  itself  is  quite  as  much 
a  voluntary  choice  as  is  the  religious  attitude. 
Choose  we  must,  whether  we  will  or  no. 
Says  Professor  James,  in  the  famous  book 
which  is  the  very  Gospel  of  this  Justification 
of  Faith,  "  We  cannot  escape  the  issue  by  re- 
maining skeptical  and  waiting  for  more  light, 
because  although  we  do  avoid  error  in  that 
way,  if  religion  be  untrue,  we  lose  the  good 
if  it  be  true,  just  as  certainly  as  if  we  posi- 
tively choose  to  disbelieve.  .  .  .  Skepticism 
then  is  not  avoidance  of  option ;  it  is  option 
of  a  certain  particular  kind  of  risk.  Better 
risk  loss  of  truth  than  chance  of  error —  that 
is  your  faith-vetoer's  exact  position.     He  is 


192  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

actively  playing  his  stake  as  much  as  the  be- 
liever is ;  he  is  backing  the  field  against  the 
religious  hypothesis,  just  as  the  believer  is 
backing  the  religious  hypothesis  against  the 
field.  To  preach  skepticism  to  us  as  a  duty 
until  '  sufficient  evidence '  for  religion  be 
found,  is  tantamount,  therefore,  to  telling  us, 
when  in  the  presence  of  the  religious  hypoth- 
esis, that  to  yield  to  our  fear  of  its  being 
error  is  wiser  and  better  than  to  yield  to  our 
hope  that  it  may  be  true.  .  .  .  And  dupery 
for  dupery,  what  proof  is  there  that  dupery 
through  hope  is  so  much  worse  than  dupery 
through  fear  ?  I,  for  one,  can  see  no  proof ; 
and  I  simply  refuse  obedience  to  the  scien- 
tist's command  to  imitate  his  kind  of  option, 
in  a  case  where  my  own  stake  is  important 
enough  to  give  me  the  right  to  choose  my 
own  form  of  risk.  If  religion  be  true  and 
the  evidence  for  it  be  still  insufficient,  I  do 
not  wish  by  putting  your  extinguisher  upon 
my  nature  (which  feels  to  me  as  if  it  had 
after  all  some  business  in  this  matter)  to  for- 
feit my  sole  chance  in  life  of  getting  upon  the 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  1 93 

winning  side  —  that  chance  depending,  of 
course,  on  my  wilHngness  to  run  the  risk  of 
acting  as  if  my  passional  need  of  taking  the 
world  religiously  might  be  prophetic  and 
right."  1 

This,  as  I  have  said,  is  the  position  taken 
by  most  pragmatists.  That  it  is  so  is  due  to 
the  general  tendencies  of  their  disposition  and 
temperament,  rather  than  to  any  logical  and 
necessary  connection  between  it  and  their 
epistemology.  Nor  is  it  by  any  means  pecul- 
iar to  them.  It  was  already  old  long  before 
pragmatism  was  born,  and  is  to-day  enthusi- 
astically supported  by  many  pronounced 
antagonists  of  pragmatism.  Cicero  voiced 
something  very  like  it  when  he  said  he 
would  rather  be  wrong  with  Plato  than  right 
with  Plato's  opponents.  And  every  one  will 
remember  that  Kant  came  even  nearer  to 
the  "  will  to  believe "  when  he  destroyed 
knowledge  in  order  to  substitute  faith.  It 
was,  of  course,  this  general  point  of  view 
that  prompted  his  advocacy  of  the  primacy 

1  "The  Will  to  Believe,"  pp.  26-27. 
o 


194  WHAT   IS    PRAGMATISM? 

of  the  practical  reason  and  his  moral  argu- 
ment for  God.  This  same  attempt  to  found 
religion  on  the  moral  will  was  carried  farther 
by  Fichte  and  still  farther  by  Ritschl.  The 
merit  of  Professor  James's  brilliant  book  lay 
not  so  much  in  its  originality,  as  in  its  giv- 
ing this  century-old  doctrine  a  broader 
philosophical  setting  and  foundation,  by 
showing  that  not  only  religious  belief  but 
nearly  all  belief  is  in  part  a  matter  of  will, 
and  in  presenting  the  right  to  believe  in  a 
form  at  once  so  persuasive  and  so  inspiring. 
I  think  I  shall  be  justified  in  saying  that 
James's  "  Will  to  Believe  "  has  been  one  of 
the  greatest  influences  for  genuine  religious 
faith  that  have  appeared  in  the  last  half 
century. 

So  much  for  the  religious  views  actually 
held  by  many  pragmatists.  And  now  for  the 
less  interesting  but  really  more  important 
attempt  to  work  out  the  logical  consequences 
of  pragmatic  epistemology  as  applied  to  re- 
ligious problems.  Our  question  therefore  is 
not,  What  attitude  does  the  pragmatist  usually 


PRAGMATISM  AND   RELIGION  1 95 

take?  but  What  attitude  ought  he  to  take  if 
he  is  going  to  be  faithful  to  his  own  presup- 
positions ? 

I  have  said  that  the  view  which  holds  the 
beliefs  of  religion  to  be  true  because  of 
their  value  for  life,  and  which  maintains  that 
we  have  a  right  to  believe  them  even  when 
unverified,  is  not  peculiar  to  pragmatism, 
and  that  it  does  not  follow  from  the  funda- 
mental principles  concerning  knowledge, 
truth,  and  meaning  which  alone  are  uniquely 
pragmatic.  But  one  must  go  farther  than 
this :  and,  in  fact,  the  thesis  which  I  shall 
seek  to  maintain  will  be  that  it  is  logically 
inconsistent  to  proclaim  and  carry  out  the 
more  extreme  and  radical  pragmatic  prin- 
ciples, and  at  the  same  time  cling  to  the 
religious  view  of  the  universe  and  seek  to 
uphold  genuine  belief  in  it. 

The  extreme  pragmatist  view,  if  I  under- 
stand it  aright,  maintains  that  the  meaning 
of  any  philosophic  proposition  can  always  be 
brought  down  to  some  particular  conse- 
quence in  human  experience.     A  true  belief 


196  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

if  it  has  any  meaning  always  "  has  a  bearing 
on  some  human  interest."  "  Theoretical 
truth  is  no  relation  between  our  mind  and 
the  archetypal  reality.  It  falls  within  the 
mind,  being  the  accord  of  some  of  its  pro- 
cesses and  objects  with  other  processes  and 
objects."  It  is  "  an  experienced  relation,"  or 
"  the  effective  working  of  an  idea,"  or  the 
process  of  the  idea's  verification.  Hence  all 
genuine  meaning  and  all  truth  (and,  of 
course,  all  knowledge  as  well)  lie  within  the 
individual's  experience,  or,  at  the  broadest, 
within  the  experience  of  the  human  race. 
The  beliefs  of  religion,  on  the  other  hand,  — 
the  very  beliefs  for  which  we  have  seen  the 
pragmatists  so  valiantly  fighting,  —  are 
largely  concerned  with  matters  which  by 
their  nature  lie  beyond  the  limits  of  human 
experience.  Primal  among  these,  for  ex- 
ample, is  the  belief  in  a  God,  —  not  merely 
in  future  experiences  of  yours  and  mine 
which  will  be  "  the  same  as  if  "  there  were  a 
God,  but  in  the  actual  present  existence  of  a 
divine  being  who  by  definition  is  not  within 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  197 

the  experience  of  any  or  all  of  us.  What- 
ever the  pragmatists  may  mean  by  God,  this 
at  least  is  what  the  religious  man  means  by 
the  term  and  what  the  pragmatist  is  natu- 
rally supposed  to  mean  when  arguing  for  the 
religious  hypothesis.  And  it  must  be  clear 
to  every  one  that  if  all  truth  and  meaning 
are  confined  to  consequences  within  our 
human  experience,  we  are  deprived  of  all 
right  to  talk  about  and  believe  in  a  being 
who  by  the  very  conditions  of  the  argument 
is  not  included  within  our  experience. 

To  this  the  pragmatist  will  reply  that  the 
very  peculiarities  of  the  pragmatic  epistemol- 
ogy  which  I  have  pointed  out  make  it  really 
the  only  sure  salvation  from  philosophic 
doubt.  All  other  views  of  truth  and  knowl- 
edge but  his  own,  the  pragmatist  will  main- 
tain, are  by  their  nature  doomed  to  end  in 
skepticism.  For  once  admit  the  necessity  of 
transcendence,  the  existence  of  a  chasm  be- 
tween your  idea  and  its  object,  and  you  have 
made  knowledge  forever  impossible.  Knowl- 
edge is  possible  and  skepticism  vanquished 


198  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

only  for  a  theory  which  denies  the  existence 
of  any  chasm  and  the  necessity  of  any  tran- 
scendence. This  is  exactly  what  pragmatism 
does.  It  points  out  that  the  whole  of  your 
genuine  meaning  can  always  be  summed  up 
in  some  possible  difference  in  your  own  (or 
other  human)  life ;  that  truth  is  only  a  con- 
crete process  within  the  mind ;  and  that 
knowledge  is  a  succession  of  the  doubt-in- 
quiry-answer type  and  "lives  wholly  inside 
the  tissue  of  experience."  Hence  your  idea 
and  its  object  are  not  separated  by  any  chasm, 
but  are  both  parts  of  the  same  chain  and 
united  by  intermediaries  of  the  same  nature. 
Your  idea  therefore  may  genuinely  know  its 
object  and  may  be  proved  true  since  its  truth 
consists  just  in  its  satisfactory  working.  Ap- 
ply this  now  to  religion,  and  all  becomes  clear. 
"  If  theological  ideas  prove  to  have  a  value 
for  concrete  life,  they  will  be  true  in  the 
sense  of  being  good  for  so  much."  "  On  prag- 
matistic  principles  if  the  hypothesis  of  God 
works  satisfactorily  in  the  widest  sense  of 
the  word,  it  is  true."  ^      Of  course,  you  must 

*"  Pragmatism,"  pp.  ii  and  299. 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  1 99 

consider  with  care  the  question  whether  it 
does  really  work  satisfactorily ;  but  if  it  does, 
that  is  all  you  mean  by  its  being  true,  and 
thus  the  chasm  and  the  need  of  transcend- 
ence is  avoided. 

Thus  pragmatism  attempts  to  save  us  from 
philosophic  doubt  by  making  knowledge, 
truth,  and  meaning  have  their  entire  being 
within  the  tissue  of  human  experience.  But 
it  was  not  the  things  within  human  expe- 
rience which  we  were  ever  tempted  to  doubt. 
It  was  the  things  outside  human  expe- 
rience, —  God,  immortality,  the  moral  nature 
of  the  universe,  the  final  victory  of  the  right, 
—  it  was  of  these  we  felt  doubtful.  And 
how  does  pragmatism  help  us  here  ?  It  does 
not  pretend  to  tell  us  what  our  future  expe- 
rience will  be,  much  less  to  declare  to  us  the 
things  that  are  outside  all  possible  human 
experience.  Its  message  is  really  this  :  You 
may  believe  there  is  a  God  because  all  you 
mean  by  a  God  is  certain  "  adjustments  of 
our  attitudes  of  hope  and  expectation."  A 
"  vague  confidence  in  the  future  is  the  sole 


200  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

pragmatic  meaning  at  present  discernible  in 
the  terms  design  and  designer."  "  Other 
than  this  practical  significance,  the  words 
God,  free  will,  design,  have  none."  ^ 

"  When  I  affirm  that  the  metaphysical  the- 
ory of  the  Absolute  \s  false,''  says  Schiller,  "I 
only  mean  that  it  is  useless,  that  it  simplifies 
nothing  and  complicates  everything."^  And 
the  consistent  pragmatist,  of  course,  holds  the 
converse  of  this;  namely,  that  when  he 
affirms  that  the  theory  of  God  is  true  he 
means  only  that  it  is  useful,  that  it  simplifies 
things  within  experience  —  not  that  there 
really  is  a  God.  This  (if  I  understand  him) 
is  the  avowed  attitude  of  Professor  Dewey, 
and  it  certainly  is  the  only  logical  and  con- 
sistent attitude  of  any  pragmatist  who  takes 
his  own  doctrines  of  truth  and  meaning 
seriously. 

Of  course,  this  view  of  religion  is  not 
what  the  reading  public  understands  the 
pragmatist  to  mean  when  he  so  bravely 
tells  us  we  have  a  right  to  believe  in  God. 

1  "Pragmatism,"  pp.  115,  121.      "^  "Humanism,"  p.  59. 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  20I 

There  is  a  general  impression  abroad  that 
pragmatism  has  somehow  discovered  a 
short  cut  to  God  and  religion  which  makes 
skepticism  no  longer  tenable,  and  that  if 
one  ever  became  a  real  philosophical  prag- 
matist,  one  would  understand  what  it  was. 
And  in  fact  nearly  all  the  pragmatists 
themselves,  except  perhaps  Professor  Dewey 
and  some  of  his  followers,  at  times  feel  the 
need  of  something  more  solid  and  objective 
than  the  sort  of  "  God "  one  comes  to  by 
strict  pragmatic  principles.  Thus  at  the 
close  of  his  "  Varieties  of  Religious  Experi- 
ence," Professor  James  points  out  that  one's 
"  subjective  way  of  feeling  things "  is  not 
all  one  wants  from  religious  beliefs ;  one 
wants  to  know  also  about  the  ''objective 
truth  of  their  content " ;  and  he  adds  in  a 
note,  "  The  word  '  truth  '  is  here  taken  to 
mean  something  additional  to  bare  value 
for  life."^  The  attempt  of  Professor  James 
to  prove  the  old-fashioned  God  by  the  new- 
fashioned    argument    is    well    criticised    by 

1  p.  509- 


202  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

Professor  Dewey  in  the  admirable  article 
from  which  I  have  already  quoted.  "  Con- 
sider," he  says,  "  the  case  of  design.  Mr. 
James  begins  by  accepting  a  ready-made 
notion,  to  which  he  then  applies  the  prag- 
matic criterion.  The  traditional  notion  is 
that  of  a  '  seeing  force  that  runs  things.' 
This  is  rationalistically  and  retrospectively 
empty;  its  being  there  makes  no  difference. 
But  '  returning  with  it  into  experience,  we 
gain  a  more  confiding  outlook  on  the  future. 
If  not  a  blind  force  but  a  seeing  force  runs 
things,  we  may  reasonably  expect  better 
issues.  This  vague  co7tfidence  in  the  future 
is  the  sole  pragmatic  meajting  at  present  dis- 
cernible in  the  terms  design  ajid  designer' 
[quoted  from  James].  Now,"  Dewey  con- 
tinues, "  is  this  intended  to  replace  the  mean- 
ing of  a  '  seeing  force  which  runs  things  '? 
Or  is  it  intended  to  superadd  a  pragmatic 
value  and  validation  to  that  concept  of  a  see- 
ing force.?  Or  does  it  mean  that,  irrespec- 
tive of  the  existence  of  any  such  object,  a 
belief  in   it  has    that   value  t     Strict  prag- 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  203 

matism  would  seem  to  require  the  first  in- 
terpretation, but  I  do  not  think  that  is  what 
Mr.  James  intends." 

Professor  Dewey  then  takes  up  the  ques- 
tion of  theism  and  materialism.  Strict 
pragmatism  would  tell  us  that  the  only 
meaning  of  theism  lies  in  the  differences  it 
makes  to  us,  and  would  therefore  substi- 
tute these  concrete  experiential  differences 
for  the  old  view  of  God  as  a  "  superhu- 
man power,"  and  would,  as  Dewey  says, 
"  simply  abolish  the  meaning  of  an  ante- 
cedent power."  ^ 

In  short,  we  have  in  the  common,  loose, 
pragmatic  treatment  of  religion  another  illus- 
tration of  the  tendency  to  smuggle  in 
"  intellectualistic "  results  to  fill  out  the 
deficiencies  left  by  pragmatic  methods. 
"  When  God  is  presented  as  the  name  of 
an  experienced  fact,  and  theistic  theories 
are  taken  as  methods  of  interpreting  that 
fact   for   purposes   of   response,    we    are   on 

^  "  What  does  Pragmatism  mean  by  Practical  ?  "  pp.  90 
and  91. 


204  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

good  pragmatic  ground.  But  when  it  is 
declared  that  '  On  pragmatist  principles  if 
the  hypothesis  of  God  works  satisfactorily 
in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word  it  is  true,' 
the  implication  to  the  innocent  reader  is 
far  otherwise.  We  can  hardly  put  the  same 
eloquence  into  the  naked  pragmatic  assertion, 
'  If  the  hypothesis  of  God  works  satisfac- 
torily in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word  it 
does  work  satisfactorily  in  the  widest  sense 
of  the  word.'  God  as  an  addition  to  an 
already  smoky  image  of  reality  at  large,  God 
as  an  aesthetic  anticipation  of  what  visual 
and  other  experiences  we  may  have  face  to 
face  when  we  have  passed  over  the  river, 
God  in  these  simple  '  copy '  ways  of  con- 
sidering our  ideas  must  be  omitted.  God 
must  be  the  name  of  a  fact  in  our  experi- 
ence, and  the  determination  of  His  ways 
must  be  the  determination  of  our  way  of 
working  out  our  wills  in  the  light  of  that 
fact."  1 

1  Max  Eastman  in  "  The  Pragmatic  Meaning  of  Pragma- 
tism," a  paper  read  before  the  Psychological  Section  of  the 
New  York  Academy  of  Sciences. 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  205 

The  logical  outcome  of  pragmatism,  there- 
fore, when  applied  to  religion  is  not  salva- 
tion from  philosophic  doubt,  but  a  necessary 
and  ineradicable  skepticism.  This,  indeed, 
might  have  been  foreseen  from  the  outset. 
We  shall  recognise  it  clearly  enough  if,  with 
the  light  we  have  now  attained,  we  read  over 
again  some  of  its  fundamental  principles. 
Take,  for  example,  its  chief  "postulate,"  as 
presented  by  Professor  Dewey.  "  Things  — 
anything,  everything,  in  the  ordinary  or 
non-technical  use  of  the  term  thing  —  are 
what  they  are  experienced  as.  Hence  if 
one  wishes  to  describe  anything  truly,  his 
task  is  to  tell  what  it  is  experienced  as 
being."  "  The  real  significance  of  the  prin- 
ciple is  that  of  a  method  of  philosophical 
analysis.  If  you  wish  to  find  out  what  sub- 
jective, objective,  physical,  mental,  cosmic, 
psychic,  cause,  substance,  purpose,  activity, 
evil,  being,  quantity  —  any  philosophical 
term  in  short  —  means,  go  to  experience  and 
see  what  it  is  experienced  as.''  And,  the 
pragmatist  would  of  course  continue,   God 


206  WHAT  IS   PRAGMATISM? 

and  the  other  objects  of  religion  are  what 
we  experience  them  as,  and  (for  us  and  our 
behef  at  least)  nothing  more.  Certain  aspects 
of  our  experience  is  all  they  can  meaji  for  us. 
And  it  is  the  same  with  their  truth.  Since  the 
truth  of  an  idea  means  merely  the  fact  that  the 
idea  works,  that  fact  is  all  you  mean  when  you 
say  the  idea  is  true.  Nothing  more,  noth- 
ing "  transcendent "  nor  "  cosmic  "  must  be 
sought  from  it.  It  is  a  very  simple  matter, 
you  see,  —  like  the  multiplication  table,  — 
"we  simply  fill  the  hole  with  the  dirt  we 
dug  out.  Why  are  twice  two  four.?  Be- 
cause, in  fact,  four  is  twice  two."  It  is  thus  a 
very  easy  thing  to  prove  our  belief  in  God  to 
be  true  by  the  good  consequences  that  flow 
from  it,  because  all  we  mean  by  God  is  just 
those  good  consequences.  The  real  out- 
come of  pragmatism  is  therefore  an  assur- 
ance that  the  questions  in  which  ordinary 
religious  people  are  interested  are  essentially 
insoluble,  —  hopelessly  insoluble,  in  fact, 
because  of  the  very  nature  of  knowledge  and 
truth  and  meaning,  —  and   that   we   should 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  207 

therefore  go  about  our  business  and  fulfill 
as  an  hireling  our  day.  For,  as  Professor 
Dewey  says,  "  The  appropriate  subject- 
matter  of  awareness  is  not  reality  at  large,  a 
metaphysical  heaven  to  be  mimeographed  at 
many  removes  upon  a  badly  constructed 
mental  carbon  paper  which  yields  at  best 
only  fragmentary,  blurred,  and  erroneous 
copies.  Its  proper  and  legitimate  object  is 
that  relationship  of  organism  and  environ- 
ment in  which  functioning  is  most  amply 
and  effectively  attained ;  or  by  which,  in 
case  of  obstruction  and  consequent  needed 
experimentation,  its  later  eventual  free 
course  is  most  facilitated.  As  for  the  other 
reality,  metaphysical  reality  at  large,  it  may, 
so  far  as  awareness  is  concerned,  go  to  its 
own  place."  ^ 

This  consignment  of  all  questions  about 
reality  at  large  which  do  not  directly  concern 
the  functioning  of  the  organism  to  their 
"  own  place  "  (which  may  be  anywhere  you 

1  "  Does  Reality  Possess  Practical  Character?"  in  the 
Columbia  Festschrift  for  James,  pp.  70-71. 


2o8  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

like  except  amongst  suitable  subjects  for 
human  discussion)  is  perfectly  justified  by, 
and,  in  fact,  is  the  only  logical  conclusion 
from  the  fundamental  principles  of  pragma- 
tism. For  if  these  principles  be  correct,  'tis 
idle  for  us  creatures  of  a  day,  who  cannot 
even  mean  anything  beyond  our  own  experi- 
ence, to  spend  our  time  on  questions  neces- 
sarily so  remote  and  inaccessible  as  are  those 
which  religious  people  tJiink  they  are  dis- 
cussing and  about  which  they  think  they 
care.  From  them  we  are  separated  by  a 
chasm  much  more  impossible  to  pass  than 
that  which  the  rationalists  seek  to  bridge 
with  their  method  of  transcendence.  For  if 
pragmatism  be  true,  it  is  not  a  chasm,  but  an 
infinite  stretch  of  empty  space  that  bounds 
each  of  us  —  or  at  least  the  race  —  on  every 
hand,  so  that  if  there  be  another  side  we  at 
least  can  neither  know  nor  even  mean  it. 
On  such  an  epistemology  the  discussion  of 
the  old  problems  of  religion  becomes  essen- 
tially a  silly  waste  of  time  and  gray  matter, 
which    might  better  be  spent  in  tilling  the 


PRAGMATISM   AND   RELIGION  209 

soil  and  nourishing  our  psychophysical 
organism.  "  The  Infinite,  the  Eternal,  the 
All-good  —  these  are  names  empty  of  all  real 
meaning,  idle  fancies  for  minds  that  will 
dream  or  idly  speculate  instead  of  seeking  to 
know  and  to  make  better  the  only  real  world 
there  is,  the  world  of  experience.  This 
world  admits  no  reference  to  a  superhuman 
reality.  We  are  thus  left  with  reality  that  is 
fragmentary  only,  with  experience  that  is 
made  up  of  flying,  ever  changing  moments, 
with  thought  that  never  wins  final  truth, 
with  temporal  processes  and  no  eternal 
to  justify  and  give  them  meaning;  with 
finite  progress  and  no  goal  finally  won ; 
with  a  better  and  no  best  as  the  ultimate 
standard  of  value  judgments.  For  the  satis- 
faction of  ethical  and  religious  ideals  and 
aspirations  we  must  look  to  our  possibly 
better  selves.  Our  idealized  selves  are  our 
gods;  and  the  cry  after  the  Divine,  the 
Eternal,  the  Complete  in  knowledge  and 
goodness,  must  be  satisfied  with  that  frag- 
ment of  truth    and   goodness   which    is   all 


2IO  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

that   our   finite   lives   can   possess   in   their 
best  estate."^ 

Of  course,  this  is  not  what  most  pragma- 
tists  actually  hold.  But  it  is,  I  maintain,  the 
logical  outcome  of  their  fundamental  princi- 
ples —  the  principles  which  alone  are  pecul- 
iar to  their  philosophy.  In  short,  if  strictly 
carried  out  to  its  logical  conclusions,  prag- 
matism is  essentially  a  philosophy  of  skepti- 
cism. Or  better  still,  perhaps,  in  Papini's 
naive  and  ingenuous  expression,  "  Pragma- 
tism is  really  less  a  philosophy  than  a 
method  of  doing  without  one." 

^  Professor  Russell,  "  Objective  Idealism  and  Revised 
Empiricism  —  Discussion,"  Phil.  Rev.,  Vol.  XV,  p.  633. 


LECTURE   VI 
THE  "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW 


LECTURE   VI 

THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW 

"Howsoever  these  things  are  in  men's 
depraved  judgments  and  affections,  yet  truth, 
which  only  doth  judge  itself,  teacheth  that 
the  inquiry  of  truth,  which  is  the  love- 
making  or  wooing  of  it;  the  knowledge  of 
truth,  which  is  the  presence  of  it ;  and  the 
belief  of  truth,  which  is  the  enjoying  of  it, 
is  the  sovereign  good  of  human  nature." 
These  words  of  Francis  Bacon  contain 
within  them  the  ultimate  justification  of  all 
philosophy.  Whoever  accepts  them  will 
hold  that  philosophical  investigation  is  an 
end  in  itself,  needing  no  apology  or  de- 
fense ;  while  to  the  man  who  challenges 
them  most  philosophy  will  seem  but  a  sorry 
waste  of  energy. 

The  present  controversy  over  pragmatism 

may   at   times  appear   to   the  non-technical 
213 


214  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

reader  a  battle  between  ghosts  and  shad- 
ows, a  smoky  discharge  of  weightless  pro- 
jectiles, a  ridiculously  noisy  war  of  words 
in  a  realm  so  far  removed  from  the  world 
of  real  life  as  to  be  quite  out  of  touch  with 
any  genuine  human  interest.  And  even 
those  of  us  who  have  somehow  got  en- 
tangled in  the  struggle  feel  now  and  then 
{crede  experto)  a  disheartening  doubt  that 
perhaps  the  game  is  not  worth  the  candle 
after  all,  and  that  maybe  our  manuscripts 
were  better  used  for  building  fires  and 
baking  bread.  This  sense  of  uncertainty, 
however,  and  of  the  possible  worthlessness 
of  one's  efforts,  is  not  peculiar  to  those 
involved  in  the  pragmatist  controversy. 
Doubt  of  the  same  discouraging  sort  is 
apt  to  come  at  times  upon  every  one  en- 
gaged in  theoretical  pursuits  of  any  nature 
and  make  him  question  seriously  and  sadly 
the  value  of  his  work.  The  Spirit  that 
Denies  is  not  far  from  any  one  of  us,  and 
is  ever  ready  with  his  disconcerting  sugges- 
tion,   "  It   may   be   clever,   but   is   it   worth 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     215 

while  ? "  At  such  moments  it  is  well  to 
turn  back  to  our  Francis  Bacon  and  read 
again  the  comforting  words  of  the  father 
of  English  philosophy.  They  bring  back 
courage  to  our  hearts  as  the  touch  of 
earth  renewed  the  strength  of  Antaeus. 
The  possession  of  truth  is  "the  sovereign 
good  of  human  nature."  We  again  feel 
sure  that  this  is  so ;  for  "  truth,  which  alone 
doth  judge  itself,  teacheth"  it.  To  make 
"an  unusually  obstinate  attempt  to  think 
clearly  and  consistently,"^  to  carry  out  our 
thoughts  to  their  logical  conclusions,  to  see 
what  we  really  mean  and  must  mean  by 
knowledge  and  truth,  these  may  be  pecul- 
iarly difficult  and  dreary  tasks,  but  they 
are  worth  our  while  if  the  possession  of 
truth  is  worth  our  while.  The  pragmatist 
controversy  is  not  logomachy  nor  is  it  un- 
important. If  the  traditional  view  of  truth 
and  knowledge  is  meaningless,  as  the  prag- 
matists  contend,  then  we  ought  to  know  it, 
and  not  slumber  on  in  dogmatic  confidence 

^  James's  famous  definition  of  metaphysics. 


2l6  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

that  our  old  bottles  will  stand  the  strain 
of  the  new  wine  which  modern  logic  and 
modern  science  are  pouring  into  them.  If 
new  bottles  are  necessary,  by  all  means  let 
us  have  them  before  the  old  ones  perish 
and  the  wine  be  spilt.  And  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  pragmatist  substitutes  for 
our  older  concepts  are  self-contradictory  and 
land  us  in  absurd  and  untenable  positions, 
that  too  we  ought  to  know.  For  clear  think- 
ing is  worth  while  for  its  own  sake,  and 
knowledge  of  the  truth  "is  the  sovereign 
good  of  human  nature." 

Nor  is  the  aim  of  either  the  pragmatists 
or  their  opponents  merely  controversial. 
At  times  it  may  seem  so,  but  this  appear- 
ance is  merely  superficial.  To  get  the 
better  of  the  other  side  is  merely  an  inci- 
dental aim,  and  deep  down  below  this  runs 
the  genuine  and  serious  desire  of  both 
parties  to  get  at  the  truth  for  its  own  sake. 
In  a  very  real  sense  there  is  no  controversy 
here  but  an  investigation,  there  are  not 
two  parties  but  one,  and  the  aim  of  all  con- 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     217 

cerned  is  to  give  each  other  mutual  aid  in 
the  common  search.  The  non-pragmatists 
genuinely  wish  to  see  pragmatism  com- 
pletely developed  and  clearly  expressed, 
and  the  pragmatists  welcome  all  criticism, 
adverse  or  favorable,  knowing  that  this  will 
only  aid  them  in  thinking  out  their  own 
thoughts  logically  and  to  the  end.  We 
are  really  partners  rather  than  opponents, 
each  seeking  the  same  thing,  each  making 
common  cause  with  the  rest,  and  each 
wishing  the  other  Godspeed. 

In  man's  long  search  after  truth  —  "  the 
lovemaking  and  wooing  of  it,"  as  Bacon 
would  say  —  it  is  possible  to  make  out  two 
chief  tendencies  or  types  of  attitude.  One 
class  of  mind  has  been  so  carried  away 
with  the  joy  of  mental  achievement,  so  en- 
chanted by  the  glory  of  truth,  that  in  seeking 
and  proclaiming  it  as  the  supreme  end  of 
life  it  has  quite  overlooked  the  fact  that 
truth  is  not  only  an  end  but  a  means  as 
well ;  that  it  not  only  is  a  good,  but  also  is 
good   for  something.     The    other    type    of 


2l8  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

truth-seeker,  noting  the  error  of  overem- 
phasis on  truth  merely  as  an  end,  has 
sought  to  counterbalance  this  mistake  by 
claying  its  emphasis  upon  the  practical  value 
of  truth  and  its  possession ;  pointing  out 
that  truth  and  knowledge  are  means  to  all 
sorts  of  other  good  things,  that  they  are 
tools  and  implements  which  should  be  used 
as  well  as  enjoyed,  and  that  in  our  enthu- 
siasm over  the  possession  of  these  things, 
the  humbler  practical  values  of  life  must 
not  be  slightedj 

It  is  to  this  latter  tendency  that  pragma- 
tism belongs  and  it  is  to  this  broad,  living, 
human  point  of  view  that  it  owes  its  rather 
striking  popularity  and  the  rapid  progress 
that  it  has  made  among  non-technical  read- 
ers. For  certainly  it  is  not  the  special 
technical  doctrines  of  pragmatism  that  have 
aroused  so  much  real  interest  among  the 
reading  public.  There  is  no  great  sponta- 
neous curiosity  in  the  community  at  large 
concerning  the  interpretation  of  the  terms 
"  meaning,"  "  truth,"   and    "  knowledge."     It 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     219 

is  rather  the  pragmatist's  large,  big-hearted, 
practical  way  of  looking  at  things  that  has 
attracted  the  general  attention  to  what  he 
has  to  say.  The  reading  public  is  seldom 
interested  in  the  technical  and  exact  side  of 
any  science  or  discipline.  It  naturally  and 
quite  properly  hates  exactness.  It  likes 
X-rays  and  electrons  and  geological  periods 
and  light  years  and  the  survival  of  the  fit- 
test; but  when  it  comes  to  technical  meth- 
ods and  exact  descriptions  and  definitions, 
it  "wants  to  be  excused."  And,  therefore, 
it  loves  pragmatism  not  as  a  technical  phil- 
osophical doctrine,  but  as  an  interesting, 
belligerent,  "  practical  "  point  of  view. 

As  such,  however,  pragmatism  is,  as  I 
have  said,  only  a  part  of  a  larger  tendency, 
—  a  tendency  which,  though  one  of  the 
most  important  characteristics  of  contempo- 
rary thought,  is  rather  difficult  to  name  or 
define.  It  might  be  called  the  empirical  or 
the  biological  or  the  historical  or,  perhaps, 
simply  the  practical  point  of  view.  It  has 
permeated  so  much  of  our  thinking  and  has 


2  20  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

taken  on  so  many  shades  and  aspects  that 
it  has  no  longer  very  much  unity  except  as 
a  general  "psychological  atmosphere,"  and 
also,  perhaps,  as  a  universal  protest  against 
the  point  of  view  which  it  opposes  and  has 
in  part  replaced.  To  make  more  plain  what 
I  have  in  mind,  it  will  be  necessary  to  say 
a  few  words  about  this  prior  point  of  view, 
which  may  be  called  (for  want  of  a  better 
name)  that  of  excessive  intellectualism. 

By  this  I  mean,  of  course,  the  tendency 
already  pointed  out,  which  considers  truth 
only  as  an  end  and  never  as  a  means,  and 
so  in  part  divorces  truth  and  knowledge 
from  the  world  of  active  and  practical  life. 
This  way  of  conceiving  things  probably  ante- 
dates history.  It  had  no  father,  and  it  seems 
to  have  dominated  in  large  part  the  thought 
of  many  of  the  ancient  philosophers.  The 
most  famous  of  its  early  representatives  was, 
of  course,  Plato.^     For  his  severance  of  the 

^  It  should  also  be  pointed  out,  however,  that  there  is  a 
decidedly  pragmatic  tendency  in  Plato,  inherited  from  his 
spiritual  father,  Socrates,  and  seen  especially  in  his  doctrine 
of  the  Idea  of  the  Good. 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT   OF  VIEW     221 

world  of  "  illusion  "  from  the  "  real  "  world  of 
Ideas,  however  great  its  value  in  some  re- 
spects, was  certainly  the  first  long  step 
toward  the  separation  of  "  true  knowledge  " 
from  the  practical  world  of  action  and  con- 
crete experience.  And,  immeasurable  as  is 
Plato's  gift  to  philosophy,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  his  sharp  separation  of  our  meanings 
from  our  individual,  living  experience,  in 
which  alone  they  are  genuinely  real,  was 
fatal  for  both.  The  inaccessible  and  change- 
less world  of  abstract  concepts,  which  Plato 
is  at  least  supposed  to  have  believed  in,  was 
erected  for  the  purpose  of  explaining  the 
changing  world  which  we  actually  experi- 
ence, and  the  chasm  which  was  made  be- 
tween them  defeated  the  very  purpose  for 
which  the  two  had  been  distinguished.  The 
purely  and  abstractly  logical  and  intellec- 
tualistic,  purified  from  all  human  taint,  was 
so  completely  divorced  from  the  emotional 
and  volitional,  from  the  struggle  and  en- 
deavor of  concrete,  pulsing  actuality,  that 
it  became   next   to   useless   as   a  means   of 


222  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

rationalizing  the  world  of  our  actual  human 
experience.  And  while  philosophy  was  con- 
structing this  purely  "  ideal  "  realm,  an  ab- 
stract psychology  was  dividing  man's  mind 
into  three  sharply  sundered  faculties,  and 
not  only  made  reason  supreme  (as  indeed 
it  should),  but  abs.tractly  "  pure "  and  in- 
dependent. 

How  far  the  above  is  a  statement  of 
Plato's  philosophy  and  how  far  a  caricature 
of  it,  is  a  question  which  for  our  present 
purposes  is  irrelevant ;  for  this  at  least  is 
the  interpretation  of  his  meaning  which 
has  had  most  influence  in  the  history  of 
human  thought.  And  it  resulted  in  an 
exaltation  of  the  abstract  intellect  and  a 
contempt  for  the  "passions"  and  feelings, 
the  impulses  and  will  attitudes  of  man, 
which  dominated  thought  for  two  thousand 
years.  Man  was  regarded  and  defined  as 
a  "  thinking  animal."  That  he  was  an 
animal  was  most  unfortunate ;  for  thought, 
"pure"  thought,  was  his  "essence."  The 
animal  nature  of  man  was  hardly  worthy  of 


THE    "PRACTICAL"    POINT   OF   VIEW     223 

investigation,  the  proper  study  of  mankind 
being  the  abstract  "  Universals  "  of  mediae- 
val "  Realism." 

Other  influences  besides  that  of  Plato 
were  brought  to  bear  in  this  direction,  — 
in  fact,  almost  every  philosopher  for  more 
than  a  thousand  years  contributed  his  share. 
Aristotle's  was  certainly  too  catholic  a  na- 
ture, too  empirical  a  mind,  to  be  a  slave  to 
any  such  excessive  intellectualism ;  yet  his 
thought  was  so  interpreted  and  his  work 
so  used  that  for  centuries  his  influence  also 
tended  to  bind  philosophy  and  science  in 
intellectualistic  fetters.  This  was  largely 
due,  of  course,  to  his  placing  the  "  theoreti- 
cal reason  "  far  above  the  "  practical  reason." 
The  syllogism,  moreover,  which  he  had 
contrived  as  a  practical  tool  for  man's  use 
was  made  a  fetish,  and  elaborated  for  its 
own  sake.  And  the  questions  upon  which 
it  was  used  and  to  which  most  scholastic 
thinkers  devoted  their  lives  were  sadly  re- 
mote from  human  experience.  Doubtless 
the  abstractions  and  absurdities  of  mediaeval 


224  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

thinkers  have  been  greatly  and  unfairly- 
exaggerated  ;  yet,  when  all  is  said,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  their  views  of  man's  na- 
ture and  of  man's  problems  were  often  false 
in  the  extreme,  and  their  quibbles  and  logom- 
achy, their  absurd  interest  in  purely  verbal 
questions,  their  expenditure  of  years  upon 
mere  fantastic  puzzles,  meant  a  pitiful  and 
irreparable  waste  of  really  great  intellectual 
power. 

The  point  of  view  of  excessive  intellec- 
tualism  did  not  die  with  the  mediaeval  school- 
men. It  has  its  representatives  to-day,  and 
it  is  against  this  tendency  to  worship  the 
purely  abstract  intellect  and  its  artificial 
problems  that  the  modern  spirit  in  general, 
and  pragmatism  in  particular,  protest.  The 
newer  point  of  view  made  its  appearance 
in  philosophy  long,  long  ago;  but  from  the 
growth  of  the  natural  sciences  in  the  last 
century,  the  development  of  the  historical 
sense,  and  especially  the  spread  of  biologi- 
cal ideas,  it  has  taken  new  strength  and 
even  a  new  form.     The  attitude  of  the  age 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     225 

is  expressed  by  the  motto,  "  Knowledge  is 
power!'  The  suitable  subjects  for  human 
investigation  are  seen  to  be  those  which 
belong  to  this  very  world  in  which  we  live, 
and  to  our  actual  experience,  —  the  prob- 
lems whose  answers  will  make  a  real  dif- 
ference to  us.  Already  two  hundred  years 
ago  it  was  perceived  that  "  the  proper  study 
of  mankind  is  man  " ;  and  now  that  man 
has  come  to  be  studied  seriously,  empirically, 
scientifically,  it  is  seen  that  he  is  a  very 
different  sort  of  creature  from  that  which 
scholasticism  painted  him.  A  "thinking  ani- 
mal," if  you  like,  he  is  indeed ;  but  the 
modern  conception  puts  the  emphasis  on  the 
"  animal  "  rather  than  on  the  "  thinking." 
For,  as  it  views  him,  man  is  not  an  ani- 
mal in  order  that  he  may  think ;  he  thinks  in 
order  that  he  may  be  a  better  animal.  Life 
is  no  longer  conceived  as  existing  for  the 
sake  of  knowledge ;  knowledge  exists  for  the 
sake  of  life.  Thought  is  not  the  "  essence  " 
of  man,  nor  is  it  for  its  own  sake.  It  is 
merely  one  of  man's  tools  by  which  he  may 


2  26  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

the  better  react  upon  his  environment,  and 
therefore  stands  upon  the  same  plane  as  his 
eyes  and  his  stomach.  It  was  developed  by 
the  struggle  for  existence  according  to  the 
law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  for  the  defi- 
nite purpose  of  guiding  the  organism  and 
so  of  helping  to  preserve  the  individual  and 
to  perpetuate  the  race.  And  contemporary 
physiological  psychology,  adopting  the  bio- 
logical point  of  view,  has  carried  it  out  in 
detail,  showing  the  exact  place  of  thought 
in  the  economy  of  nature,  —  its  position  in 
the  reflex  arc  pointing  to  its  sole  function; 
namely,  the  guidance  of  the  individual's 
action  upon  the  environment.  Conscious- 
ness is  really  only  a  stop-gap  for  mechanical 
action.  In  the  words  of  an  eminent  German 
psychologist,^  it  is  the  "  defect  of  habit." 
And  our  own  foremost  physiological  psy- 
chologist writes  as  follows  :  — 

"  The  structural  unity  of  the  nervous 
system  is  a  triad,  neither  of  whose  elements 
has   any   independent  existence.     The  sen- 

1  Max  Dessoir  in  "  Das  Doppel-ich." 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     227 

sory  impression  exists  only  for  the  sake  of 
awakening  the  central  process  of  reflection, 
and  the  central  process  of  reflection  exists 
only  for  the  sake  of  calling  forth  the  final 
act.  All  action  is  thus  r^-action  upon  the 
outer  world ;  and  the  middle  stage  of  con- 
sideration or  contemplation  or  thinking  is 
only  a  place  of  transit,  the  bottom  of  a  loop, 
both  of  whose  ends  have  their  point  of 
application  in  the  outer  world.  If  it  should 
ever  have  no  roots  in  the  outer  world,  if 
it  should  ever  happen  that  it  led  to  no 
active  measures,  it  would  fail  of  its  essential 
function,  and  would  have  to  be  considered 
either  pathological  or  abortive.  The  cur- 
rent of  life  which  runs  in  at  our  eyes  or 
ears  is  meant  to  run  out  at  our  hands, 
feet,  or  lips.  The  only  use  of  the  thoughts 
it  occasions  while  inside  is  to  determine 
its  direction  to  whichever  of  these  organs 
shall,  on  the  whole,  under  the  circumstances 
actually  present,  act  in  the  way  most  pro- 
pitious to  our  welfare."  ^ 

^  James,  "  Reflex  Action  and  Theism,"  in  "  The  Will  to 
Believe,"  pp.  113,  114. 


228  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

The  difference  between  what  may  be 
called  the  intellectualistic  and  the  practical 
views  of  thought  and  knowledge  is  admi- 
rably stated  in  another  passage  by  the  same 
brilliant  writer.  To  the  question,  he  says, 
why  we  must  intellectualize,  interpret,  and 
understand  our  originally  pure  or  raw  expe- 
rience, rationalism  and  pragmatism  give  dif- 
ferent answers.  "  The  rationalistic  answer  is 
that  the  theoretic  life  is  absolute  and  its 
interests  imperative,  and  that  to  understand 
is  simply  the  duty  of  man,  and  that  he  who 
questions  this  need  not  be  argued  with,  for 
by  the  fact  of  arguing  he  gives  away  his 
case.  The  pragmatic  answer  is  that  the 
environment  kills  as  well  as  sustains  us,  and 
that  the  tendency  of  raw  experience  to  extin- 
guish the  experient  himself  is  lessened  just 
in  the  degree  in  which  the  elements  in  it 
that  have  a  practical  bearing  upon  life  are 
analyzed  out  of  the  continuum  and  verbally 
fixed  and  coupled  together,  so  that  we  may 
know  what  is  in  the  wind  for  us  and  get 
ready  to  react  in  time.     Had  pure   experi- 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     229 

ence,  the  pragmatist  says,  been  always  per- 
fectly healthy,  there  would  never  have  been 
the  necessity  of  isolating  or  verbalizing  any 
of  its  terms.  We  should  just  have  experi- 
enced inarticulately  and  unintellectually  en- 
joyed. This  leaning  on  '  reaction '  in  the 
pragmatist  account  implies  that  whenever 
we  intellectualize  a  relatively  pure  experi- 
ence, we  ought  to  do  so  for  the  sake  of 
redescending  to  the  purer  or  more  concrete 
level  again ;  and  that  if  an  intellect  stays 
aloft  among  its  abstract  terms  and  general- 
ized relations,  and  does  not  reinsert  itself 
with  its  conclusions  into  some  particular 
point  of  the  immediate  stream  of  life,  it 
fails  to  finish  out  its  function  and  leaves 
its  normal  race  unrun. 

"  Most  rationalists  nowadays  will  agree 
that  pragmatism  gives  a  true  enough  ac- 
count of  the  way  in  which  our  intellect 
arose  at  first,  but  they  will  deny  these  later 
implications.  The  case,  they  will  say,  re- 
sembles that  of  sexual  love.  Originating  in 
the  animal  need  of  getting  another  genera- 


230  WHAT  IS   PRAGMATISM? 

tion  born,  this  passion  has  developed  second- 
arily such  imperious  spiritual  needs  that  if 
you  ask  why  another  generation  ought  to 
be  born  at  all,  the  answer  is :  '  Chiefly  that 
love  may  go  on/  Just  so  with  our  intellect : 
it  originated  as  a  practical  means  of  serving 
life ;  but  it  has  developed  incidentally  the 
function  of  understanding  absolute  truth ; 
and  life  itself  now  seems  to  be  given  chiefly 
as  a  means  by  which  that  function  may  be 
prosecuted."^  All  of  which  the  upholders 
of  the  practical  or  biological  point  of  view 
of  course  deny. 

The  advantages  of  this  viewpoint  are,  of 
course,  too  obvious  to  need  enumeration. 
It  brings  down  knowledge  from  the  skies 
and  makes  it  concrete,  useful,  and  living. 
It  directs  investigation  into  paths  which 
lead  us  to  genuine  and  valuable  results. 
And  it  brings  about  a  simplification  and 
systematization  of  our  knowledge  which,  to 
the    scientist,   is    hard    to    overvalue.     The 

i"The  Thing  and  its  Relations," /^'w^- ^ '^'■^^'^•j  Vol.  II, 
PP-  30-31- 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     231 

various  facts  of  psychology  now  get  a  defi- 
nite setting  and  fit  in  with  the  biological 
facts,  with  a  place  for  everything  and  every- 
thing in  its  place,  like  beads  on  a  string. 
The  one  great  biological  purpose  —  the 
forwarding  of  the  life  of  the  individual  and 
of  the  race  —  is  seen  to  dominate  and  to 
determine  each  detail,  and  thus  makes  the 
whole  circle  of  the  life  sciences  beautifully 
systematic  and  complete. 

Nor  is  it  the  life  sciences  alone  that  have 
thus  been  systematized  and  illumined  by 
the  newer  point  of  view.  The  biologists 
have  found  it  possible  to  apply  their  for- 
mula to  ethics  as  well ;  and  by  the  aid  of  it 
have  sought  to  throw  new  light  on  the 
meaning  of  duty  and  the  moral  imperative. 
Thus  from  them  we  learn  that  man's  chief 
end  is  to  put  himself  in  line  with  the  prog- 
ress of  evolution  and  to  make  the  purpose 
and  aim  of  evolution  his  own.  This  aim 
and  purpose  is,  we  are  told,  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  individual  and  the  reproduction 
and    "  development "  of   the    race.     This    is 


2  32  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

shown  by  such  facts  as  the  following  : 
that  the  organism  is  brought  to  full  per- 
fection at  the  age  of  reproduction,  that  after 
that  age  is  passed  degeneration  begins  to  set 
in,  —  the  teeth  decay  and  fall  out,  the  eye 
grows  less  keen,  the  bodily  force  is  abated, 
etc.,  etc.  Individual  preservation  and  race 
reproduction  being  thus  the  purpose  of  the 
evolutionary  process,  a  "  scientific  "  psychol- 
ogy must  interpret  all  of  man's  functions 
in  this  light.  His  emotions  are  for  the 
sake  of  stimulating  him  to  action,  his 
thought  is  for  the  guidance  of  that  action, 
the  action  always  aiming  directly  or  in- 
directly at  self-preservation  or  race  repro- 
duction. Nothing  else  is  for  its  own  sake  ; 
or,  at  any  rate,  if  there  seem  to  be  other 
ultimate  aims  than  action,  they  are  either 
pathological  or  abortive.  Hence  knowledge 
is  purely  "  practical "  and  for  the  sake  of 
action,  and  the  end  of  righteousness  and 
ground  of  morality  is  the  preservation  of 
the  race. 

Nor  have  the  physiological  psychologists 


THE   "PRACTICAL"  POINT   OF  VIEW     233 

been  behindhand  in  assisting  the  biologists 
to  reformulate  our  ethical  concepts.  From 
one  of  the  most  enthusiastic  of  their  num- 
ber, for  example,  I  quote  the  following:  — 
"  Although  to-day  the  old-fashioned  dual- 
ism of  sense  and  reason  has  been  set  aside 
in  the  higher  scientific  circles,  and  although 
psycho-physiological  science  is  now  in  a  con- 
dition to  provide  the  necessary  data  for  a 
detailed  psycho-physiology  of  the  Moral  Im- 
perative," ethics  "  still  continues  to  waste 
its  efforts  in  the  quest  for  the  criterion  of 
conduct."  To  seek  for  a  moral  criterion  is 
vain,  nor  is  the  real  truth  about  the  prob- 
lems of  right  and  wrong  to  be  discovered  by 
the  antiquated  and  intellectualistic  meth- 
ods of  the  ethical  philosophers.  It  is  to 
be  gained  only  by  a  study  of  the  reflex-arc. 
Genuinely  to  understand  the  moral  impera- 
tive, it  must  be  got  at  from  the  psycho- 
physiological point  of  view.  Such  a  truly 
scientific  study  shows  that  "the  Moral  Im- 
perative is  the  psychic  correlate  of  a  reflec- 
tive, cerebro-spinal,  ideo-motor  process,  the 


234  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

efferent  end  of  which  is  organized  into 
motor  tracts  coordinated  for  a  specific 
action."  ^ 

After  what  I  have  said  of  the  over-em- 
phasis in  years  past  upon  the  abstract  intel- 
lect and  of  the  great  value  of  the  more 
modern  practical  point  of  view,  I  hope  I 
shall  not  be  accused  of  doing  the  latter 
injustice  if  I  say  that  in  some  ways  the 
reaction  seems  to  have  gone  too  far.  The 
last  quotation  will  perhaps  illustrate  my 
meaning.  The  biological  tendency  of  con- 
temporary thought  has  contributed  a  great 
deal  of  value  to  our  science  and  philosophy, 
but  like  many  another  excellent  tendency  it 
has,  in  my  opinion,  been  somewhat  over- 
emphasized. It  has  pressed  its  splendidly 
useful  and  illuminating  formulae  too  far,  it 
has  attempted  to  simplify  too  much,  and  in 
doing  so  it  has  become  somewhat  narrow, 
somewhat  blind,  and  somewhat  unempirical. 
Its  formulas  are  able  to  explain  a  great  deal 

^  Professor  Leuba  in  "  The  Psycho-physiology  of  the 
Moral  Imperative,"  Am.  Jour,  of  Psy^Vol.  VIII,  pp.  529-530. 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     235 

of  our  reality;  but,  in  our  enthusiastic  ap- 
plication of  them,  many  things  which  they 
do  not  fit  have  been  either  bent  out  of  shape 
or  completely  disregarded  and  left  out  of 
account.  In  fact  the  whole  point  and  pur- 
pose of  this  lecture  is  to  protest  against 
this  excessive  practical  or  biological  point 
of  view,  and  to  urge  a  partial  return  to  some- 
thing like  the  old-fashioned  intellectualism. 
I  am  very  far  from  denying  either  the  ex- 
cesses to  which  intellectualism  has  been 
carried,  or  the  great  value  of  the  newer 
tendency.  The  reaction  was  needed,  and  it 
has  been  wonderfully  productive  and  fruit- 
ful. But,  to  my  thinking,  the  pendulum  has 
now  swung  too  far  in  the  anti-intellectualistic 
direction. 

Especially  is  this  the  case  with  the  bio- 
logical view  of  morality  and  knowledge. 
As  to  the  former  I  need  only  point  out 
that  it  is  a  very  loose  kind  of  reasoning 
which  would  hold  it  possible  to  determine 
anything  about  the  highest  good  and  the 
moral  imperative  from  either  the  course  of 


236  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

evolution  or  the  nature  of  the  reflex-arc.  It 
may  be  indeed  that  the  "  progress  "  of  evolu- 
tion tends  toward  the  highest  good,  but  if 
we  know  this  to  be  so  it  is  because  we  know 
independently  of  the  facts  of  evolution  what 
we  mean  by  the  highest  good.  The  moral 
imperative  may  indeed  be  "  the  psychic  cor- 
relate of  a  reflective,  cerebro-spinal,  ideo- 
motor  process,"  but  it  is  not  the  moral 
imperative  because  of  its  correlation  to  this 
fearful  and  wonderful  function.  The  ques- 
tion how  duty  is  possible,  the  question  what 
obligation  means,  are  hardly  answerable  by 
pointing  to  the  reflex-arc.  The  truth  is,  in 
our  reaction  against  scholastic  "  logic-chop- 
ping," description  is  being  substituted  for 
definition,  psychology  for  logic,  the  ought 
is  neglected  for  the  is,  and  questions  of 
meaning  are  set  aside  or  "  answered "  by 
theories  of  origin.  Above  all  (in  "  the 
higher  scientific  circles "  especially),  the 
mighty  shibboleth  "  Evolution "  and  the 
facts  of  physiological  psychology  are  com- 
ing to  be   regarded  as  having   the  answer 


THE   "PRACTICAL"  POINT  OF  VIEW     237 

to  nearly  all  real  questions.  "  Develop- 
ment "  is  the  catchword  of  the  times  — 
without  too  much  curiosity  as  to  what  we 
are  developing  toward,  or  why  we  should 
do  it. 

Nor  should  the  "  practical  "  view  of  knowl- 
edge go  altogether  unchallenged.  No  one, 
indeed,  would  any  longer  deny  the  practical 
value  of  knowledge  and  thought  in  guiding 
the  reaction  of  the  individual  upon  his  en- 
vironment. But  when  it  is  maintained  that 
this  is  the  only  value  to  be  found  in  knowl- 
edge and  reason,  that  all  human  values  are 
ultimately  matters  of  action,  and  that  the 
possession  of  truth  is  always  a  means  and 
never  an  end  in  itself,  then,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  it  is  time  to  call  a  halt  and  to  reassert 
the  old  and  trite  thesis  that  to  know  the 
truth  is  worth  while  for  its  own  sake.  The 
whole  splendid  tradition  of  humanity's 
scholars  and  thinkers  from  the  Greeks  to 
the  present  day  is  evidence  of  this.  The 
existence  of  pragmatism  itself  proves  it.  The 
noble    army   of    "those   who    know,"   from 


238  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

their  master  down,  rises  up  to  testify  to  the 
fact  that  knowledge  itself,  and  even  apart 
from  its  practical  results,  is  one  of  the 
things  most  exceedingly  worth  while.  And 
not  only  "  worth  while  "  is  it ;  it  is  as  gen- 
uinely human,  as  genuinely  natural  and 
normal  as  is  digestion  or  movement  or 
reproduction.  In  the  words  of  "  that  im- 
mortal sentence  "  of  Aristotle's  —  ''All  men 
by  nature  desire  knowledge!'  ^  Nor  can  I 
here  refrain  from  quoting  a  little  more  at 
length  from  "the  master  of  those  who  know." 
"  If  men  philosophized  in  order  to  escape 
ignorance  it  is  evident  that  they  pursued 
wisdom  just  for  the  sake  of  knowing,  not 
for  the  sake  of  any  advantage  it  might 
bring.  This  is  shown  too  by  the  course 
of  events.  For  it  is  only  after  practically 
all  things  that  are  necessary  for  the  comfort 
and  convenience  of  life  had  been  provided 
that  this  kind  of  knowledge  began  to  be 
sought.  Clearly,  then,  we  pursue  this  knowl- 
edge for  the   sake  of  no  extraneous  use  to 

^  '< Metaphysics,"  I,  i. 


THE   "PRACTICAL"  POINT   OF   VIEW     239 

which  it  may  be  put;  but,  just  as  we  call 
a  man  free  who  serves  his  own  and  not 
another's  will,  so  also  this  science  is  the 
only  one  of  all  the  sciences  that  is  liberal, 
for  it  is  the  only  one  that  exists  for  its 
own  sake.  .  .  .  More  necessary,  indeed, 
every  other  science  may  be  than  this ;  more 
excellent  there  is  none."  ^ 

I  have  ventured  to  dwell  thus  at  length 
on  the  value  of  knowledge  for  its  own  sake 
to  the  human  mind  because  the  tendencies 
of  contemporary  thought  (of  which  prag- 
matism is  one  of  the  most  conspicuous 
representatives)  seem  to  call  for  a  protest 
from  some  one.  This  is  perhaps  the  first 
time  since  the  days  of  Plato  when  such  a 
protest  has  been  needed.  That  the  posses- 
sion of  reason  and  of  truth  was  in  itself  one 
of  the  many  genuine  values  of  human  life, 
irrespective  of  what  you  could  do  with  them, 
was  to  our  fathers  simply  a  truism.  But 
we,  in  our  enthusiastic  assertions  that  reason 
is  for  the  sake  of  life,  are  almost  forgetting 
1  Ibid.,  I,  2  (Bake well's  Translation). 


240  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

that  reason  is  a  part  and  a  product  of  life, 
—  in  fact  its  finest  product  and  "  the  sov- 
ereign good  of  human  nature  "  —  and  that 
in  a  very  true  sense,  therefore,  life  may 
also   be   for   the   sake   of   reason. 

And  I  speak  of  this  not  only  because 
the  protest  seems  to  me  timely  and  need- 
ful, but  also  because  in  the  modern  de- 
thronement of  reason,  the  new  disregard 
of  certain  old  distinctions,  and  the  partial 
substitution  of  psychology  for  logic,  there 
is  apt  to  be  involved  a  loss  of  respect  for 
careful  thought  and  a  decreased  endeavor 
after  logical  consistency.  In  our  revolt 
against  "  rationalistic  abstractions "  and 
"  pure  reason "  we  are  in  danger  of  for- 
getting that  the  Principles  of  Contradiction 
and  Identity  still  hold  whether  we  recog- 
nize them  or  not,  and  that  the  canons  of 
Aristotle's  Logic  cannot  be  disobeyed  with 
impunity.  We  decry  the  logomachy,  the 
hair-splitting  distinctions,  and  the  "logic- 
chopping  "  of  the  scholastics ;  yet  it  may 
well   be   that   in   throwing   these   aside   we 


THE  "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     241 

are  surrendering  some  of  the  clear  think- 
ing that  went  with  them. 

Unless  I  have  quite  failed  of  my  purpose 
in  the  preceding  lectures,  I  need  bring 
forth  no  further  evidence  of  the  dangers 
just  referred  to  than  pragmatism  itself. 
Pragmatism  is  one  of  the  signs  of  the 
times  and  is  perhaps  the  most  typical  repre- 
sentative of  the  tendencies  of  which  I  have 
been  speaking.  A  brief  repetition  and  sum- 
mary of  its  principal  positions  will  therefore 
not  be  out  of  place  in  concluding  this,  our 
final  lecture. 

Pragmatism  has  too  great  contempt  for 
"  logic-chopping  "  and  "  hair-splitting  dis- 
tinctions "  to  be  willing  to  define  for  us 
exactly  its  view  of  the  nature  of  meaning. 
The  meaning  of  any  concept,  it  assures  us, 
is  limited  to  the  future  practical  conse- 
quences which  come  from  it;  —  but,  as  it 
turns  out,  these  ''practical  consequences " 
mean  theoretical  ones  also ;  and  it  is  not  at 
all  certain  that  the  "future  consequences" 
need  be  future  after  all.     Pragmatism  is  in- 


242  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

deed  fully  persuaded  that  nothing  can  have 
meaning  which  has  not  consequences  in 
some  one's  experience ;  but  whether  this 
"  some  one  "  refers  merely  to  "  ourselves " 
or  may  include  sentient  beings  of  the  re- 
mote past  and  the  distant  future,  God,  and 
even  purely  imaginary  beings,  we  cannot 
yet  be  perfectly  sure.  The  new  doctrine  of 
meaning,  on  which  pragmatism  is  founded, 
therefore  amounts  to  this:  that  meaning  is 
somehow  or  other  related  to  experience, 
and  probably  limited  to  human  experience. 
Further  than  this  the  pragmatist  is  pre- 
vented from  refining,  —  for  fear,  apparently, 
of  chopping  logic. 

In  his  treatment  of  truth  the  pragmatist 
again  on  principle  refuses  (or  is  unable)  to 
recognize  a  somewhat  subtle  but  very  real 
and  important  distinction ;  namely,  that 
between  the  meaning  of  a  thing  and  the 
proof  of  it,  the  distinction  between  the 
7iature  of  a  relation  and  our  knowledge  of 
it.  The  assertion  that  an  idea  might  be 
true   when  not  known  to  be  true  seems  to 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     243 

him  meaningless;  nor  is  he  willing  to  admit 
any  distinction  between  the  truth  of  an 
idea  and  the  concrete  verification  of  its 
truth.  When  you  prove  the  truth  of  a 
thing,  the  proof  and  the  thing  proved  are 
one.  In  like  manner,  once  you  admit  that 
a  true  idea  usually  "  works,"  so  that  you 
can  test  its  truth  by  its  working,  pragma- 
tism immediately  concludes  that  its  truth 
co7isists  in  its  working,  that  its  working 
is  all  you  mean  by  its  truth.  In  other 
words,  since  trueness  and  working  usually 
go  together,  the  two  are  identified,  and  we 
are  told  that  we  have  here  not  two  con- 
cepts but  one,  and  that  when  we  say  true- 
ness we  mean  working.  And  the  question 
is  not  even  asked  whether  the  idea  is  true 
because  it  works  or  works  because  it  is 
true  —  the  one  conception  being  simply 
substituted  for  the  other.^  All  of  which, 
in  good,  old-fashioned,  much-derided  scho- 
lastic   language,    is    a    complete    confusion 

^  Here  I  should  make  exception  of  Professor  James,  who, 
in  one  passage,  says  plainly  (as  has  been  pointed  out)  that 
the  idea  works  because  it  is  true. 


244  WHAT  IS  PRAGMATISM? 

between  "  essence  "  and  "  accidents  "  ;  ix.^ 
between  what  we  mean  by  truth  and  the 
mark  or  incidental  quality  by  which  we 
decide  whether  we  have  it  or  not. 

Failure  to  make  distinctions  of  this  kind 
and  to  seek  for  exactness  in  definition,  and 
possibly  also  in  part  a  pragmatic  belittling 
of  the  rules  of  formal  logic  have  led  the 
pragmatists  into  the  still  more  serious  logi- 
cal difficulties  pointed  out  in  our  second 
lecture  on  Truth.  The  moderate  pragma- 
tists hold  that  the  working  of  an  idea  is 
essential  to  its  truth,  yet  that  the  idea  may 
be  true  before  it  works ;  v/hile  the  radical 
school  which  makes  the  truth  of  an  idea 
altogether  a  matter  of  satisfactory  sequent 
experience  is  forced  thereby  to  admit  that 
under  certain  quite  natural  circumstances 
contradictory  opposites  must  both  be  true  at 
the  same  time  and  in  the  same  sense.  And 
both  schools  in  all  their  writings  are  con- 
stantly seeking  to  establish  for  their  theory 
the  very  kind  of  truth  which  that  theory 
maintains   is   impossible   and   meaningless. 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     245 

In  the  pragmatic  doctrine  of  knowledge 
both  the  odd  characteristics  of  the  "  large, 
loose  way  of  pragmatism "  (as  the  prag- 
matists  so  picturesquely  and  truthfully 
designate  their  method)  reappear ;  namely, 
its  curious  habit  of  shying  at  impor- 
tant distinctions  and  the  consequent 
want  of  consistency  that  naturally  results 
from  looseness  of  thought.  Thus  prag- 
matism will  not  admit  that  there  is  any 
conceivable  difference  between  a  defini- 
tion of  the  nature  of  knowledge  and  a 
psychological  description  of  the  mental  pro- 
cesses experienced  by  the  individual  when 
he  knows.  It  will  not  consider  the  possi- 
bility that  knowledge  can  be  a  different 
sort  of  thing  from  an  individual's  mental 
process.  When  you  ask  what  is  meant  by 
knowledge  pragmatism  answers  by  telling 
you  how  you  feel  when  you  have  it.  The 
possibility  of  transcendence  being  thus  dog- 
matically denied,  error  too  becomes,  in  the 
long  run,  merely  the  way  you  feel.  It  is, 
therefore,  quite  possible  for  you  and  me  to 


246  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

hold  diametrically  opposite  views  on  the 
same  subject  and  both  be  said  to  know, 
provided  we  are  both  satisfied  and  remain 
satisfied  with  our  respective  opinions.  Each 
man  thus  becomes  for  himself  the  measure 
of  all  things,  and  each  man  has  knowledge 
provided  his  experience  continues  to  feel 
satisfactory.  And  yet  the  pragmatist  is  cer- 
tain that  on  this  question  he  is  in  posses- 
sion of  knowledge  and  you  are  not,  no 
matter  how  you  feel  about  it. 

These  principles  concerning  meaning, 
truth,  and  knowledge  are,  as  I  have  said, 
the  presuppositions  and  foundations  of  prag- 
matism. But  before  bringing  these  lectures 
to  a  close  one  word  more  should  perhaps 
be  added  concerning  the  general  pragmatic 
view  of  metaphysics  and  religion.  Before 
doing  this,  however,  I  must  make  a  dis- 
tinction between  the  pragmatists  ;  for  in 
their  metaphysical  and  religious  attitudes 
they  are  far  from  being  of  one  mind. 

Professor  James  has  divided  all  thinkers 
into  two  types,  the  "  tough-minded  "  and  the 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT   OF  VIEW     247 

"  tender-minded."  The  former  tend  to  take 
the  naturalistic,  scientific,  strictly  logical 
view  of  the  world,  uninfluenced  by  human 
aspirations  and  desires.  The  latter  look  at 
things  in  more  idealistic  fashion  ;  with  them 
religion  and  beauty  and  optimism  have 
more  influence  than  the  bare  facts  of  sci- 
ence or  the  cold  results  of  reasoning.  James 
has  also  pointed  out  that  pragmatism  is  a 
compromise  between  the  two  types,  sharing 
in  the  characteristics  of  each.  This  de- 
scription seems  to  me  most  apt,  in  respect 
both  to  the  two  types  in  general  and  to  the 
position  of  pragmatism  in  particular.  To 
carry  it  still  further  into  detail,  one  might 
say  more  specifically  that  the  pragmatist 
is  tough-minded  intellectually  and  tender- 
minded  emotionally;  or,  better  still,  perhaps, 
that  he  is  tough-mmded  and  tender-hearted. 
It  might,  however,  be  more  exact  to  say 
that  there  is  really  no  such  being  as  "  the 
pragmatist,"  but  that  there  are  many  prag- 
matists  and  that  they  are  divisible  roughly 
into  two  schools,  —  the  tough-minded  and 
the  tender-minded  respectively. 


248  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

The  tender-minded  school  is  by  far  the  more 
popular  of  the  two  —  and,  I  suppose,  justly 
so.  It  is  interested  in  the  logical  and  episte- 
mological  principles  of  pragmatism  not  so 
much  on  their  own  account,  as  for  the  sake 
of  the  more  humanly  important  and  interest- 
ing conclusions  that  may  be  drawn  from 
them.  Its  heart  is  really  not  so  much  in 
logic  as  in  metaphysics  and  especially  in 
religion.  Its  pragmatist  technique  it  re- 
gards purely  pragmatically,  as  a  means 
rather  than  as  an  end.  The  eternally  ab- 
sorbing questions  of  philosophy  which  have 
always  appealed  and  always  will  appeal  to 
the  popular  and  the  philosophic  mind  alike, 
are  the  things  it  really  cares  for.  It  is 
also  essentially  human.  It  dislikes  blood- 
less abstractions  and  technical  terminology 
and  strives  always  to  be  clear,  concrete, 
and  vital.  It  is  broad  in  its  sympathies, 
charitable  in  its  interpretations,  and  impa- 
tient only  of  scholastic  logic-worship  and 
the  rationalistic  Absolute.  It  has  a  fine 
feeling   for   reality,    and    will    not   allow    its 


THE   "PRACTICAL"    POINT   OF   VIEW     249 

own  logical  presuppositions  permanently 
to  hide  from  it  the  real  living  world.  Its 
view  of  the  universe  being  essentially  opti- 
mistic (or  at  least  "  melioristic "),  it  likes 
interestmg  things  and  believes  in  them. 
Uninteresting  things  it  finds  hard  to  accept. 
The  rationalistic  view  of  the  world  musi  be 
false  because  it  is  "  inert,"  "  static,"  "  stag- 
nantly intellectualistic,"  —  and  the  opposite 
view  must  be  true  because  it  is  "  dynamic  " 
and  "  dramatic."  The  tender-minded  prag- 
matist  is,  in  fact,  the  very  impersonation 
of  the  will  to  believe  and  the  great  pro- 
tagonist in  the  world  of  philosophy  of  the 
strenuous  life.  He  treats  philosophical 
questions  in  a  large,  generous,  practical 
way,  hates  logic-chopping,  and  does  not 
take  even  his  own  principles  too  seriously. 
It  is  fortunate  for  his  conclusions  that 
this  is  the  case ;  for  they  are  reached  not 
because  of  the  pragmatist  principles  so  much 
as  in  spite  of  them.  No  better  illustration 
could  be  given  of  the  oft-repeated  remark 
that  our  philosophical  arguments  are,  as  a 


250  WHAT   IS  PRAGMATISM? 

rule,  afterthoughts  which  we  construct  to 
excuse  or  buoy  up  beliefs  that  originate 
and  subsist  quite  independently  of  reason- 
ing. Only,  in  the  case  of  pragmatism  the 
philosophical  presuppositions  do  not  even 
excuse  the  belief.  The  tender-minded  prag- 
matist  accepts  "  God  "  and  the  conclusions 
of  a  religious  metaphysics  in  much  the 
same  way  as  does  the  old-fashioned  thinker, 
quite  oblivious  of  the  fact  that  if  knowledge 
be  merely  experienced  transition  and  truth 
be  merely  satisfactory  consequences  and 
transcendence  be  nothing  but  nonsense,  it 
becomes  quite  absurd  to  take  the  old 
religious   beliefs   seriously. 

This  fact  is  seen  with  perfect  distinct- 
ness by  the  tough-minded  pragmatist.  He 
was,  in  truth,  the  first  to  point  it  out,  nor 
has  he  been  the  last  in  drawing  attention 
to  the  inconsistencies  of  his  tender-minded 
brother.  Thus,  as  we  saw  in  the  last 
lecture.  Professor  Dewey,  with  his  tough- 
minded  disregard  for  our  prejudices,  shows 
that  if  we  cling  to  our  pragmatist   presup- 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT  OF  VIEW     251 

positions  we  can  no  longer  mean  by  "  God  " 
a  "  seeing  force  that  runs  things,"  but  only 
a  vague  expectation  of  better  issues  in  our 
own  experience.  Both  he  and  James,  in 
fact,  unite  in  saying :  "  This  vague  con- 
fidence in  the  future  is  the  sole  pragmatic 
meaning  at  present  discernible  in  the  terms 
design  and  designer."  For  the  old  notion 
of  "  God "  as  an  antecedent  Power  who 
was  and  is  and  is  to  come,  the  consistent 
pragmatist  will  carefully  "  substitute "  the 
concrete  differences  which  under  certain 
conditions  we  shall  experience,  and  he  will 
"simply  abolish  the  meaning  of  an  antece- 
dent power." 

With  the  same  unemotional  logic,  the 
tough-minded  pragmatist  points  out  that 
the  biological  view  of  thought  and  knowl- 
edge leads  one  inevitably  to  the  same 
conclusion  and  shuts  out  the  hypothetical 
objects  of  metaphysics  and  theology  from 
the  proper  field  of  human  thought.  The 
mind  exists  for  the  purpose  of  guiding  the 
reaction    of   the    psycho-physical    organism 


252  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

upon  its  surroundings,  and  "  its  proper  and 
legitimate  object  is  that  relationship  of 
organism  and  environment  in  which  func- 
tioning is  most  amply  and  effectively  at- 
tained." The  only  realities  that  have  or 
can  have  any  genuine  meaning  for  us  are 
of  the  "  practical  "  sort.  All  other  "  reality  " 
—  "  metaphysical  reality  at  large  "  —  may, 
therefore,  go  to  its  own  place. 

By  thus  deducing  the  logical  conse- 
quences of  his  doctrine  the  tough-minded 
pragmatist  has  put  us  decidedly  in  his  debt ; 
for  now  we  can  see  clearly  that  the  prag- 
matist controversy  is  not  a  mere  academic 
discussion,  but  has  truly  pragmatic  impor- 
tance. For  it  opens  up  the  whole  ques- 
tion of  the  nature  of  man  and  his  position 
in  Reality.  Is  man  indeed  what  the  bio- 
logical pragmatist  considers  him  —  a  crea- 
ture of  the  environment,  a  successful  animal, 
whose  one  aim  is  practical  reaction  upon 
his  surroundings  ?  Or  is  he  a  twofold 
being?  Is  he  what  the  pragmatist  de- 
scribes  and,  in   addition  to  that,  also  what 


THE   "PRACTICAL"   POINT   OF   VIEW     253 

Plato  thought  him  —  a  citizen  of  the  realm 
of  eternal  reason,  the  outgrown  ape,  who 
means  more  than  he  is,  whose  reach  should 
and  does  exceed  his  grasp,  who  "  partly 
is  and  wholly  hopes  to  be "  ? 

If  the  pragmatist  is  right,  if  it  be  true 
that  man  cannot  mean  more  than  he  ex- 
periences, that  his  reach  cannot  exceed  his 
grasp,  if  "  God  "  and  the  "  moral  nature  of 
the  Universe "  in  the  old  sense  are  really 
meaningless  terms,  and  if  all  this  follows 
inevitably  from  the  analysis  of  our  mean- 
ings and  our  knowledge,  then  let  us  by  all 
means  know  it,  and  give  in  our  adherence 
to  the  pragmatic  and  biological  view.  But 
let  us  not  accept  this  analysis  too  lightly 
nor  without  long  weighing  of  its  worth, 
forgetful  of  the  consequences  which  such 
acceptance  must  logically  carry  in  its  train. 
The  concepts  we  have  been  considering  in 
these  lectures  may  have  seemed  abstract 
and  lifeless,  but  the  deepest  questions  of 
our  destiny  ultimately  hang  upon  them. 
And    the    attitude    which    we    shall    adopt 


254  WHAT   IS   PRAGMATISM? 

toward  the  pragmatist  principles  will,  if  we 
be  consistent,  determine  our  whole  philos- 
ophy, our  whole  outlook  upon  life  and 
upon  the  world.  If  this  fact  be  clearly 
grasped  I  am  sure  no  further  excuse  need 
be  pleaded  for  the  difficult  and,  I  fear, 
dreary  discussions  that  I  have  led  you 
through  during  the  course  of  these  lectures. 


INDEX 


Absolute,    37,    56,    57,    100,    184, 

187,  200,  248. 
Action  in  Pragmatism,  16,  18,  19, 

226,  227,  237. 
Aristotle,  223,  238-240. 

Bacon,  213,  215. 

Biological  View  of  Mind,  109, 
113,  225-230,  234-237,  SSI- 
ass- 

Bosanquet,  112. 

Bradley,  31,  37,  38,  52,  53,  67. 

Cicero,  193. 

"Claim,"  57-63,  74,  75.  83,  87-89, 

98,  103,  127. 
Correspondence  Theory  of  Truth, 

65-79,   9Si   9^>    '°a>    ^°^>    ^°8, 

III  note,  128. 

Dessoir,  226. 

Dewey,  9  note,  17,  21,  37,  57,  74 
note,  92,  93,  97,  100,  101,  104, 
108, 109,  III,  114,  115,  123  note, 
124  note,  125  note,  143,  145, 
146,  150,  152,  163,  166,  179, 
180,  186,  188,  200-203,  205, 
207,  250. 

Eastman,  204  note. 
Ethics,  see  Morality. 
Ewer,  68. 

Faith,  13,  186,  190-194. 
Fichte,  194. 

Future  Experience,  19,  28-37, 
199,  241,  251. 


God,  12,  30,  35,  42,  135,  184, 
196-206,  209,  242,  250,  251, 
253- 

"Idea"  in  Pragmatism,  109-115, 

124  note,  125  note. 
Intellectualism,  see  Rationalism. 

James,  10,  12-14,  19,  20,  23,  25, 
26,  29,  30  note,  31,  33  note, 
37,  41,  42  note,  57,  67,  68, 
71,  74  note,  76,  79,  85,  90,  93- 
97,  100,  loi,  108,  129,  139,  142, 
146-150, 152-159,  166,  180,  182, 
183,  188,  191,  194,  201-203, 
215  note,  226-230,  243  note, 
246,   247,  251. 

Joachim,  52. 

Kant,  12,  193. 

Knowledge,  9,  131,  135-171,  177, 
179,  196-199,  206,  213,  215, 
216,  218,  220,  225,  230,  "232, 
23s.  237-239,  242,  245.  246, 
250.  253- 

Leuba,  233,  234. 
Locke,  135,  136. 
Logic,  14,  124  note,  126  note,  129, 

130,  178,  236,  244. 
Lotze,  37. 
Lowell,  28. 

Man,  222-232,  252,  253. 
Materialism,  30,  31,  33-36,  303. 
Meaning,  9-46,  50,  63-65,  72,  74, 
75.     78,     79.     139.     154.      177. 


"> 


25s 


256 


INDEX 


186,    195-200,    202-206,    209, 
218,  221,  236,  241,  242,  246, 

253- 
Metaphysics,    13,   39,   41.   43.   44, 

177,  207,  246,  248,  250-253. 
Method  in  Pragmatism,  10,  12,  20, 

38-45- 
Modified     Pragmatism,     94-108, 

244. 
Montague,  29  note  1,  115  note. 
Moore,  114  note,  123  note. 
Morality,  13,  231-236. 

Ostwald,  14. 

Papini,  22,  43,  44,  210. 

Paulsen,  68. 

Pearson,  14. 

Pierce,  15,  16,  19. 

"Plan   of  Action,"    17,    109-115, 

144. 
Plato,  127,  137,  141,  143.  165,  193, 

220-223,  239,  253. 
Practical  Experience,  16,   19,   25, 

28,  241. 

Rationalism,  77,  142,  220-224, 
228-230,   235,   237-240,   249. 

Realism,  37,  65,  223. 

Reality,  Pragmatic  Theory  of,  9, 
178-180. 

Religion,  13,  42,  175-210,  246- 
248,  250-253. 

Ritschl,  194. 

Royce,  17,  37,  114. 

Russell,  130  note  2,  210  note. 

Satisfaction,  see  Usefulness. 
Schiller,  22,  23,  25,  26,  37,  53,  57, 


59.  71-73.  74  note,  75,  87-89, 
92,  97,  101-103,  130,  179,  182, 
185,  200. 

Scholasticism,    42,    223-225,    240. 

Science,  13,  14,  55,  no,  185,  187, 
224,  233,  239,  247. 

Skepticism,  130,  131,  191,  197, 
201,  205,  210. 

Socrates,  220  note. 

Successful  Working,  see  Useful- 
ness. 

Theism,    30,    31,   33-36,   203. 

Theoretic  Interests  in  Pragma- 
tism, 23-25,  39-43- 

Transcendence  Theory  of  Knowl- 
edge, 138-140,  143,  149-162, 
1 68-1 71,  197-199,  206,  208, 
245,  250. 

Trueness,  52,  60,  65,  67,  70,  74, 
83,    85,    86,    88,   89,    107,    112, 

243- 
Truth,  8,  13,  15,  22,  45,  46,  47- 
131,  141,  161,  177,  181,  185, 
196-201,  204,  206,  209,  213, 
215-220,  237,  239,  242-244,  246, 
250. 

Usefulness,  13,  15,  61,  62,  90-121, 
124  note,  125  note,  126,  145, 
158,  159,  164-169,  185-189, 
196,  198-200,  204,  206,  243, 
244,  250. 

Verifiability,  94,  101-104,  118, 
119. 

Verification,  61-64,  78,  86-88,  90- 
107,  115-121,  127,  128,  145, 165, 
185-190,  196,  198,  243- 


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